Unideal Observers

Check It Out

2009-12-01T15:32:00.004-05:00

Our blog has been included on a list of "100 Ethics Blogs Every Business Student Should Read." You can check it out here.

Conundrum

2009-10-05T19:20:00.003-04:00

Imagine that we have embraced modal, global normative skepticism: we have concluded that we never do and never could be aware of the normative facts. We may continue to ask questions about what we ought to do, but we can never properly answer these questions. Proper answers necessitate our knowing what is of value, or what normative reasons there are, or what moral obligations we have—facts to which we have no access.

At this point, we ask a further question: Are there any normative facts? Given our skepticism, asking this question is largely pointless. But, on its face, the question still seems sensible. We might continue to wonder about it, if only out of some morbid obsession with the question itself.

It seems to me, however, that this further question is not, in fact, sensible. It makes no sense to say that something is a reason for me to act in a particular way if it is not possible for me to be aware that it is a reason for me to so act. Similar claims can be made regarding values or obligations. Put simply, normative facts are inherently action-guiding. This is a conceptual claim, one I hope you share. As the primary intention of this post is not to defend this claim, I will not say anything more about why I take this to be the case, though I am happy to argue the point in comments or elsewhere. Rather, my concern is with how to express this claim, a challenge I have found surprisingly difficult.

Consider:

X is a normative fact iff X is action-guiding.

This seems a simple way of putting the point. As I've cashed it out, this becomes:

X is a normative fact iff X is capable of guiding action. Then,
X is a normative fact iff some possible agent is aware that X is a normative fact.

This last highlights the problem: the biconditional generates a paradox. The claim is that something is a normative fact only if someone can recognize this. But, of course, someone can only recognize that something is a normative fact if it is a normative fact. So this will not do.

So, how do I express my claim? I have tried several ways, but all seem ultimately to run into this problem. Yet the intuition does not seem paradoxical: You may not agree with me, but surely my thought is coherent. Surely, for instance, I can create some new concept: 'arglax'. Arglaxes are inherently knowable entities. There is no such thing as an arglax that no one is aware of. Again, this is a conceptual claim, not a metaphysical one; we are not imagining some strange creature that pops out of existence if no one is aware of it. Rather, we are claiming of each thing in the world that it cannot turn out to be an arglax unless it is in principle possible for us to know that it is an arglax.

Student Grade Expectations

2009-02-20T01:21:00.002-05:00

To most of us teaching here this is probably not news, but I thought it was worth posting:

NY Times: Student Expectations Seen as Causing Grade Disputes

I suspect that the gut reaction for most of you is the same as for me: disgust. Grades are a mode of assessment, not only of effort, but of the quality of a student's work (perhaps on the theory that this, in turn, is a way of assessing that student's skill or skill+effort). When I read that students are willing to ask, boldly, "what else is there?" when considering grading criteria beyond effort, I am left in abject horror.

That's what my attitude is (well, most of the time). But what should it be? Certainly, grades aren't just about effort, but is it really still reasonable to treat a C as an acceptable grade for a diligent student who meets our expectations? And if not, what does this mean for grades; or, rather, what do grades mean? Should graduate schools (or whoever cares about undergraduate grades) just treat transcripts as reports on how hard-working their applicants are?

And even if we should grade that way, can one, in good conscience, continue to do so knowing that one is alone in so doing, and that one's students will suffer for it in terms of comparative standing? What do we do when we have to choose between our convictions about grading and our convictions about fairness?

An Epistemic Standard

2009-01-27T13:28:00.004-05:00

I'm looking for feedback on the plausibility of a MINIMAL epistemic standard:

MES: My belief that b counts as knowledge/epistemically justified only if its being the case that b factors into some possible explanation of my belief.

I don't think it matters whether we talk about knowledge or epistemic justification, though I'm open to disagreement on this point. Also, I think the relevant kind of possibility is nomological, but I have to think about it more.

Does 'Has Reason' Imply 'Can'?

2009-01-13T20:32:00.004-05:00

I'm in the process of reading through Mark Schroeder's latest (fascinating) book, Slaves of the Passions. Therein, he makes the following argument about Brett, who is in a position where he can only satisfy one of two conflicting desires:

". . . there simply can't be a reason for Brett to do everything that promotes his desires. His very situation shows that it is impossible for him to do everything that promotes his desires. So on a generalization of the principle that 'ought' implies 'can', we simply shouldn't accept that there is a reason for Brett to do this." (53)

What I'm curious about here is this generalization of 'ought' implies 'can'. Do we need to think that the generalization holds, that 'has reason' also implies 'can'? I will make a few preliminary remarks about my thoughts so far, and then I'd like to see what people think.

First, a bit about why we might think this is true: Of course, one might think that 'has reason' implies 'can' is just intuitively true (perhaps in the same way that 'ought' implies 'can' is). For a more principled reason, consider the fact that many (including myself) take it that oughts and reasons can be understood in terms of one another, allowing for the following platitudes (my thanks to Christian Coons for mentioning the relevance of the latter): (A) x ought to φ just in case x has most reason to φ; (B) If x has reason to φ then, ceteris paribus, x ought to φ.

If one accepts (A) and (B), it does seem prima facie plausible that having a reason to φ means one can φ. After all, consider a case in which one's only reason were to do some impossible thing. In such a case, one would (it seems) have most reason to do that thing, in which case—by (A)—one ought to do that thing. But then, of course, 'ought' implies 'can' has been violated.

But I find none of this particularly persuasive. First, I do not find the idea that 'has reason' implies 'can' intuitive. It seems to me that if I want to experience what it is like to be a bat, I have some reason to turn into a bat.^* Now, of course, it is not possible for me to turn into a bat, and so it will never be the case that I ought to do so, but this doesn't make me think that I have no reason to do so.

But what of the connection to 'ought'? I'm not sure how I feel about this, but let's try it on for size: What if I take the very fact that it is impossible for me to turn into a bat as a very good reason for me not to do so? What's more, I take it that any act's being impossible is going to be a very good reason for me not to perform that act. Then (A) and (B) don't seem to pose a problem any longer. It will never turn out to be the case that my reason to do something impossible is what I have most reason to do (or that all else is really equal) because I will always have a stronger reason not to do it—namely that it is impossible.

Then again, I must admit I'm a bit queasy about the idea that something's being impossible is a reason not to do it. There is something odd about the idea that I take the fact that I can't φ as a consideration against my φ-ing. Then again, there might be other solutions in the same area. Perhaps the impossibility isn't itself a reason against, but there is some other explanation for why it will never turn out that in the balancing of reasons, those to do impossible things rise to the top (or that everything else is ever equal when one has reason to do an impossible thing).

Anyway, I'd like to know what people think. Where do intuitions lie? Is this just an intuitive matter? Or is there some more principled reason to accept 'has reason' implies 'can', perhaps stemming from acceptance of 'ought' implies 'can'?

^*Actually, I don't believe this at all, but insofar as I'm playing with this Humean framework, I think it plausible that if desires were connected with reasons in the relevant way, then this desire would mean I had this reason.

CFP: Princeton Graduate Conference in Political Theory

2009-01-13T20:18:00.002-05:00

Graduate Conference in Political Theory
Princeton University
April 17-18, 2009

The Committee for the Graduate Conference in Political Theory at Princeton University welcomes papers concerning any period, methodological approach, and/or topic in political theory, political philosophy, and/or the history of political thought. Approximately eight papers will be accepted.

Each session, led by a discussant from Princeton, will be focused exclusively on one paper and will feature an extensive question and answer period with Princeton faculty and students. Papers will be pre-circulated among conference participants.

The keynote address, "Utopophobia," will be given by David Estlund (Professor of Philosophy, Brown University).

Submissions are due via the submission form on the conference website by January 31, 2009. Please limit your paper submission to 7500 words and format it for blind review (the text should include your paper's title but be free of other personal and institutional information). Papers will be refereed on a blind basis by current graduate students in the Department of Politics at Princeton. Acceptance notices will be sent in February 28, 2009.

Assistance for invited participants' transportation, lodging and meal expenses is available from the committee, which acknowledges the generous support of the Democracy and Human Values Project, University Center for Human Values, Department of History, Department of Classics, and Department of Politics at Princeton University.

All papers should be submitted through the online form. Submissions by email or snail mail will not be accepted.

Questions and comments can be directed to: polthry@princeton.edu

For more information, please visit the conference website at: https://politicaltheory.princeton.edu/

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T19:04:00.003-05:00

I just want to wish all our bloggers and readers a happy and healthy 2009.

Moral Utterances, Nihilism and the Negation Problem

2008-11-06T14:29:00.002-05:00

I am working on an argument that expressivism is incapable of making sense of certain kinds of nihilistic utterances. Dave Shoemaker and the editors over at Pea Soup have been generous enough to allow me to post my argument there for feedback. I thought I'd put a note up here in case anyone would like to look at or participate in the discussion. There is a general link to Pea Soup on the sidebar. Click here for the discussion itself.

Tortured Beef, It's What's for Dinner

2008-07-19T22:29:00.003-04:00

Let's say we accept an argument similar to a voter irrationality argument, but applied to the meat industry. I won't rehearse the argument in detail, but it's something like:

1. Given the extent of the meat industry and the amount of meat consumed by the average person, no single person's decision to stop eating meat will in any way affect the number of (we'll stick with cows here) killed over any given period of time.
2. Given this, no single person can, on their own, have any effect whatsoever on the number of cows killed over a period of time.
3. Thus, to stop eating beef for the purposes of saving the lives of cows is an entirely ineffective means to that end.
4. Thus, if one's sole purpose in not eating beef is to save the lives of cows, not eating beef is irrational.

OK, now, let's say that you accept the validity of this argument. Here's another:

1. It is worse to end the life of a non-suffering being than it is to end the life of a suffering being, at least in the case that one has no power to alter the amount of suffering in the situation other than through the being's death.
2. Thus, if one has decided to take a life, it would be better to take the life of a suffering being than that of a non-suffering being.
3. Thus, eating beef from a factory farm is prima facie better than eating beef from somewhere less tortury.

Of course, the conclusion here has two caveats. First, we are assuming that in eating meat one is taking a life at all; if the first argument is sound, this is not the case. Second, the ought generated by this argument is merely prima facie. It could be overridden by other moral considerations.

At this point, one might think that it just doesn't matter where the beef we eat comes from. If the first argument is to be believed, then we can have no effect either way, and thus barring the introduction of other moral considerations in favor of vegetarianism, eating meat, regardless of its source, is permissible.

But notice something: the number of cows killed in non-factory farms over a given period of time is much lower than the number killed in factory farms. Thus, when one purchases meat from a non-factory farm, one has a greater chance of affecting the number of cows killed than one does by purchasing meat from a factory farm. Of course, the chances still might be zero, but if non-zero, they are larger.

So, we are now in position for the following:

1. Assume that the only moral reason not to eat beef is for purposes of avoiding killing cows.
2. If Argument 1 is sound, then one cannot reduce the total number of cows killed by not eating beef.
3. If Argument 1 is unsound (because premise 2 is false), it is most likely to be because one can affect the number of cows killed in non-factory farms more easily than in factory farms.
4. Thus, if Argument 2 is sound, then either:
5a. It is impossible to affect the number of cows killed by not eating beef, and thus there is no moral argument (recall premise 1) for a single person to refrain from eating beef; or
5b. One can only affect the number of cows killed by refraining from eating non-factory farmed beef, and thus if one wishes to lower the number of cows killed, one has a prima facie duty to eat only factory farmed beef; or
5c. One can affect the number of cows killed by refraining from eating beef in all cases, though one's influence will be greater in the case of non-factory farmed beef. However, while other interests (such as the prevention of factory farming specifically) may override, one still has a prima facie duty to eat meat from factory farms.

If I am correct about premises 2 and 3, I think it most likely that either 5a or 5b is the case. But of course, we have something of an epistemological problem; we may be unsure of which actually is the case. If, however, we can rule out 5c (which I suspect we can, though I fully admit I don't have the numbers to back me up), then in the case where we are unsure whether 5a or 5b obtains, we ought to prefer eating factory farmed beef, since we will either be choosing one of two equally permissible options or will avoid killing non-suffering cows.

Even if 5c is still an option, however, we still have some reason to prefer eating the factory farmed beef, though I suspect many will argue that even the epistemic possibility that we are negatively affecting the factory farming industry overrides these other considerations. In that case, Herman, you may continue to ease your guilt with Chipotle.

Ownership, Guardianship, Stewardship

2008-07-12T15:08:00.001-04:00

I'm busy working on a paper. I'm trying to make sense of what Kant and Locke said in the context of self-ownership. But it isn't just of historical interest, I'm pretty sure that what I have to say about Kant and Locke can easily be transferred to what current self-ownership theorists have to say.

Kant says something like: "We are masters over ourselves, but we are not owners of ourselves." He then offers what might be seen as two arguments against self-ownership: The first is the problem of self-reflexivity (how can the proprietor and property be the same thing?), while the second is the problem of viewing persons as things (we can own things, but persons are not things). In addition, Kant tells us that we are to act in a way that is consistent with the humanity-in-ourselves, and he thinks this means a prohibition on suicide, masturbation, and a bunch of other things.

Meanwhile, Locke insists that we own ourselves, that God also owns us, and that we have legitimate authority over our children to tell them what to do, and so on. Locke insists that there are restrictions on what we can do with ourselves, something that we are told we own. We can't committ suicide, or harm ourselves, and this is explained, at least in part, by appeal to the fact that God ultimately owns us, and that he commands us to preserve ourselves and others.

There are ways to work with the concept of ownership and these views. There are ways to reconcile everything that Locke says, and everything that Kant says. But all of the ways are clunky, and require adjustments to the concept of ownership. I think I have a better idea. I think we have access to concepts that make making sense of Locke, Kant, and the special case of children easier. Those concepts are guardianship and stewardship. I think Kant's view is best expressed as a self-stewardship view, while Locke's view is best viewed as a self-guardianship view. Children, meanwhile, don't count as things to be owned, but as wards to be guarded.

To be an owner over something, call it x, is to have most of the sticks in the bundle of rights that make up the concept property. This is A.M. Honore's view. There are 12 "sticks" ("incidents" more formally) in the bundle: I have a right to use, transfer, derive income, and so on, things that I own.

For Honore, there are no "essential" rights in order to be able to say that we "own" something. Others disagree. These people say that alienability (right to sell or transfer), and disposability (right to destroy) are fundamental features of ownership. They say that we are not really owners of x unless we can sell x or smash/destroy x. I have similar linguistic intuitions with these other theorists. I really think that it makes no sense to talk of "owning" something unless I can really sell it or destroy it.

If these others and I are right, then not being permitted to sell ourselves into slavery, or not being permitted to harm ourselves or commit suicide, are inconsistent with the principle of self-ownership, strictly understood. At least some self-ownership theorists agree, and bite a big bullet. They say we can sell ourselves into slavery (no one really thinks permitting suicide or harm to ourselves is a devastating objection to self-ownership anymore).

Turning to the distinction I want to introduce: We can distinguish ownership, stewardship, and guardianship in the following way.

To be an owner is to have legitimate authority over what is to be done with something that we own. To be an owner is to choose the sake that will be targeted when it comes to things we own. For example, we can smash our telephone, or use it to make a phone call, or do whatever we like with it, even on a whim. There is no special moral obligation that we have to heed with respect to what we own (we only have to heed general moral obligations that are moot about specific things--like, we can't hurt others, even when what we use to hurt others is something we own).

To be a guardian over something is to have legitimate authority over the thing guarded on the condition that we be guided by the sake of our ward. We are under a moral obligation to always regard what is best for our ward when we deal with our ward. For example, we are morally required to do what is best for our children.

Meanwhile, to be a steward is to have legitimate authority over a thing on the condition that we heed the sakes of third parties when we are making decisions with respect to the thing we are a steward over. We are under a moral obligation to heed those sakes. For example, we can be a steward over a forest for the sake of future generations, and we are under a moral obligation to preserve the forest for the sake of those future generations. Or, we might be a trustee (I think this is just a special case of stewardship) over a trust fund for someone's children. And so on.

If we have to heed the sake of the humanity-in-us, as Kant says, when we do things with ourselves, then it might be better to view ourselves as self-guardians (or self-stewards, I'm not clear). It is not difficult to see how someone can be a master over x, while not an owner, when we think of what we mean by the concept of guardianship. A guardian is a master, but his or her having this legitimate authority is conditioned by a moral obligation to heed the sake of the ward (in this case, the humanity-in-us). We do not own ourselves, strictly speaking.

For Locke, we have been given legitimate authority over ourselves by God, but only on the condition that we act in accordance with what God wants for his property, us. We are self-stewards. Both masters over ourselves, and under a moral obligation to heed God's sake when we do things with what we are stewards over, ourselves. We do not own ourselves, strictly speaking.

The same might be said of children (and the elderly suffering from neuro-degenerative diseases). We are not owners of our children, but guardians over them. We are required to heed their sake when we have dealings with them.

I think this makes better sense of Kant and Locke than other attempts. I think guardianship and stewardship are good concepts to use in some cases in place of ownership. We can now begin to wonder about when it is fitting to view ourselves as stewards or guardians, rather than owners, when it comes to some special categories of things. Like our pets, our children, and certain cultural artefacts (like Rembrandt paintings and so on).

Singer's Child in the Pond: Variations on a Theme

2008-06-19T15:43:00.003-04:00

So because I like testing-out paper ideas here...

I'm tinkering around with some variations on Singer's Child in the Pond case, trying to figure out the extents/limits of the obligations we can get (if we think we can get any) out of examples such as these. Specifically, I'm trying to get at just how much we can be obligated to do. So here are the cases I'm playing with.

Case 1:
There's a man drowning in the pond (I'm jettisoning the children bit... too many knowledge/responsibility problems). I'm on the shore, too far away to swim to get him. But there is a vending-machine-type thing next to me that offers two possible rescue-options for people who are drowning in the pond.

(a) For $100 I can have a little device teleported into the drowning man's hand (maybe he's not drowning per-se, but he's clutching to a piece of driftwood and will be drowning shortly). The device has a button on it that, if pressed, will teleport him safely to the shore.

(b) For $500 I can activate a giant crane that will reach out and scoop the man out of the water and carry him to safety.

I have only $500 with me. We can presume I am obligated to do one of these. But am I obligated to do (b) instead of (a)? Or have I discharged my obligation if I pursue (a) instead of (b)?

Case 2:
The same as Case 1 except now I have $600 with me. I opt to send the teleportation-button out to the man and he refuses to push it. He knows it will save him, at no cost or other adverse consequence to him. He just refuses to make the minimal effort required. Am I now obligated to send out the $500 crane?

Case 3:
Identical to Case 1 again (where I have only $500), but instead of a teleportation-button, the $100 sends out a rope that the man can use to pull himself to shore. (Here presume the man physically capable and that I know this.) Have I discharged my obligation if I send out the rope instead of the crane?

Case 4:
Like Case 3 except I have $600 available. I send out the rope and the man refuses to pull himself to shore. Must I now send out the $500 crane?

What if, in all the above cases, I know that the man is remarkably lazy and will quite likely be unwilling to push the button/pull himself to shore? What If I'm certain that he'll be unwilling? In cases 1 and 3 where I can only use one of the methods, must I then opt for the more expensive crane-rescue? In cases 2 and 4 when this comes true, does my foreknowledge change what I'm obligated to do once my expectations are indeed met?

Thanks for all responses in advance...
Corwin

Best Philosophical Writers

2008-06-02T19:39:00.003-04:00

So in an effort to be a better writer I'm interested a list of those you consider the best philosophical writers. William Zinser, acclaimed book editor, says that there are several writers he will always read no matter the subject matter they write about. The idea is to identify those philosophers that you think are the model of philosophical writing--whether or not you agree with their position. It might be good to include a favorite article or chapter of theirs. But most important (at least for me) is why they deserve to be on the list. What is it about their writing that makes it exceptional? I'm still working on my list but at the risk of being too hasty, I'll list a few that I've concluded are philosophers that I will try to read anytime I see one of their articles even if the subject is out of my field of inquiry. My list is probably influenced by my personal writing vices. These people are who I am trying to emulate

In no particular order:

Christopher Shields (I tend to overcomplicate my writing. Shields to me is the paragon of simple direct claims, reasons, and conclusions. He even announces his claims by saying "claim"! His new summary of Aristotle is both philosphically astute and critical but upper level undergraduates could use it.

Etinne Gilson (A thomist who is clear, concise, and doesn't have an ax to grind with analytic philosophy. He is a model of the principle of charity without being soft on his opponents.) The Unity of Philosophical Experience is his best work. Although from Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again is good as well.

Ken Greenawalt A philosopher who writes like a lawyer and a lawyer who thinks like a philosopher. As a lawyer he doesn't fill his law review articles with thousands of cases but rather can summarize complicated concepts into a few short paragraphs with clarity. Above all his prose is interesting. ) Check out his Speech, Crime, and the Uses of Language.

Harry Frankfurt I can't put my finger on it yet, but the importance of what we care about reads so nicely.

That's all for now. More as I think through this. Look forward to your own list

Torture and Walzer's Sliding Scale

2008-04-09T08:54:00.005-04:00

So here's a thought that occurred to me recently. Chapter sixteen of Michael Walzer's excellent Just and Unjust Wars offers the argument that violations of just conduct in war (jus in bello) have been justified in some historical circumstances where the moral emergency of losing was sufficiently great.

His first example of this is the bombing of Dresden. In this case, because the threat of Nazism's victory constituted a supreme moral catastrophe, and because the British seemed genuinely in danger of losing the war at that moment, the British bomber command was justified in destroying Dresden in spite of the fact that the attack's intent was to terrorize the civilian population and restore British war morale. Walzer suggests that this justification is not absolute, but that there is a "sliding scale" that can justify normally prohibited actions (bombing civilians) when the moral emergency represented by losing the war is sufficiently high.

Walzer's contrast case is Hiroshima. At that point in the war, Japan's navy was essentially non-existent and her ground forces had been beaten back to their home islands. Walzer argues that dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima was not justified in the way that bombing Dresden was because America was in no danger of losing the war at that moment. (I realize that there are lots of reasons why we dropped atomic weapons on Hiroshima, and I think the most compelling ones are utilitarian arguments based on casualties to the Japanese had we invaded their mainland. However, I wish to bracket these other reasons, and for the purposes of this essay assume that civilian non-combatant immunity is sufficient to overrule them.) Walzer claims that we owed the Japanese an experiment in diplomacy given our position in the war in 1945, and that dropping the bomb was not the right thing to do.

Now we come to an interesting question. Suppose that Walzer's right. If the test case is not bombing civilians in wartime, but torturing terrorists who know the location of a weapon of mass destruction, can Walzer's sliding scale be used to justify such actions? Both are thought to be violations of jus in bello, and I can imagine cases in which there might be imminent threat and supreme moral emergency. Suppose that we knew there was a nuclear device disguised as a vending machine somewhere in Washington D.C., and that we had a man in custody who knew its location. If the weapon goes off, then all at once we lose the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian Institute, effectively decapitating our country. (This is not an exhaustive list of what would be lost, and we might have the upside of losing a few special interest lobbies, but let this case stand as a sufficient example of moral emergency.) In this case, can we make the claim from this Walzerian argument that torturing the prisoner is morally justified?

I can think of at least two objections. The first is that this is a veiled utilitarian argument, and so just losing the lives of a few people would be enough for Walzer's argument, but not enough for our intuitions about torture. Against this charge, I suggest that the aggregate value of life is problematic to policy-making mainly because to the extent that it's an absolute value, it can stall any policy making that has that value on each side of the equation, and simply aggregating that value can justify policies of majority tyranny that we historically reject. In other words, one need not be utilitarian to take the view that it may be the right thing to do to perform a little evil to prevent a lot of evil.

The second objection is that we might reject the reasoning in the last objection and take a strong Kantian line: we say that the value of life is absolute, and that moral responsibility for the chaos that ensues following the destruction of our government in the above example attaches exclusively to those who perpetrated the act. We should not engage in further wrongdoing. Against this objection I suggest that the objection seems less intuitively plausible the greater the degree of moral emergency one stacks on the other side. One's imagination can run wild here, but I won't turn this post into a Stephen King story; I simply reject the intuition as an intuition when the moral stakes are high enough.

So what say you all? Shall we torture to prevent moral catastrophe?

It has been silent here...

2008-03-09T14:58:00.001-04:00

so what have you all been observing? Let's liven things up!

Reasons and Justification

2007-12-31T14:28:00.000-05:00

I'm working on a paper and would like some input on an argument I'm putting together.

The thought is basically this:
If reasons (for action) are supposed to be the kinds of things that can/do justify actions, and we adopt an instrumental model of reasons that grounds all of our reasons in our desires/interests/ends/what-have-you, then do we need to craft an argument for why our desires/interests/ends/what-have-you are themselves justified? I'm working from an analogy from epistemology. If we take a foundationalist approach to knowledge, then the "foundation" needs itself to be justified in order to confer justification on anything built upon it. The concept of "the given" (or variations thereof) is usually invoked to this end. If we're going to preserve the justificatory force (assuming we want to - I'm just assuming this for the moment) of our reasons for action, then, do we need to make a similar case for the justification of our desires if we're going to preserve the thought that instrumental reasons are justifying reasons?

Here's a nice 'diagram' of the question:

Simplified Model of Instrumental Reasons:
Desires (taken as basic) for X -----> Instrumental reasoning says Y is a good/efficient/whatever way to achieve X ----> Reason for agent to Y

Simplified Model of Foundationalism:
"The given" (whatever it is) -----> "Good" reasoning says "the given" entails a particular proposition P ----> Reason for agent to believe P.

The typical problem for foundationalist epistemology is that "the given" stands itself in need of justification, or stands in need of an argument saying why "the given" (whatever it is) is justified if its really going to give justifying reasons for the agent to believe P. What I'm wondering is whether or not we need a similar argument in the case of instrumental reasons is even needed (whether or not we think such an argument is possible - I happen to think it might not be, but thats not the issue at hand) if we're going to consider reasons for action as being justifying reasons. In the end my worry is this: if we do need such an argument to preserve the justificatory force of reasons for action, AND if one cannot be given - say, for instance, that desires are just not the kinds of things that can be justified or unjustified, or are not the kinds of things that can be apt or inapt - then are we just left in the position of being unable to say that our actions are ever justified/unjustified at all? Just as with the epistemological problem, if the "foundation" is not justified (whether that is taken to mean unjustified or just a-justified), then is the Reason at the end also not possessed of any justificatory force too?

Thanks for your help!

A Serious Ethical Dilemma that Needs Everyone's Attention IMMEDIATELY

2007-12-25T11:16:00.000-05:00

Just kidding, Merry Christmas, everyone.

Andrew Napolitano Interview

2007-12-14T17:03:00.000-05:00

Here is the excerpted interview we did with Andrew Napolitano.

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the distinction between ethics and aesthetics

2007-12-09T01:29:00.000-05:00

I'm writing a paper on attempts to make the distinction between ethical judgments and aesthetics judgments and would be interested to hear why people think there is a distinction and how they make that distinction.

Though this might sound simple its actually a lot harder than you might think.

edited to say I should have said ethical JUDGMENTS and moral JUDGMENTS not just ethics v art

Abortion

2007-12-01T16:52:00.001-05:00

As most of you know, Miles, Terrence, and I do a weekly radio show on 88.1 FM. We talk politics, and often veer into more philosophical subjects. For instance, last week we chatted about abortion for a while. David (Faraci) called in and carried the conversation further, and Brandon tried to join in but we ran out of time. I think we will be talking abortion next week, so be sure to listen in and call in for that.

Here's the podcast. The abortion chat doesn't happen until about halfway through Hour 2.

Sensible Torture Policy

2007-11-24T10:29:00.000-05:00

For years I've been baffled by the huge mess the Bush administration has made of "the torture issue."

I'm going to lay out a policy for torture (surprise - it's utilitarian) that I think a) any president's administration should hold, and b) any president's administration should keep SECRET. As I'll argue, (b) is essential, and without it, one shouldn't pursue (a).

This is a pretty simple idea I'm recommending. Let's start by imagining a classic "ticking time bomb" scenario, where thousands of lives hang in the balance, and we're confident that a single person knows where the bomb is. If the question is whether to torture one person to save 3,000 lives (where other options have been exhausted) I think the obvious answer is that torture is morally permissible. Only the strictest of Kantians ought to object to this, I think. Most objections will be along epistemological lines, I think. That is, how can I be sure that I've got the right guy and that this will save people's lives, etc. Well, put these questions aside for the moment. Imagine that we are confident about the cost-benefit analysis.

So part (a) is just asserting that torture is permissible in cases where we're justified in thinking that torturing someone can directly result in the saving of many lives. This is, I think, exactly what Bush takes to be his mandate. But look at all the trouble this has caused! Not just hot water for the administration, but this news about Bush torture policy has made America objectively less safe. Obviously torture is offensive to people. It ought to be offensive! When people in middle eastern countries who already suspect us of ill deeds see something like guantanamo, they get even angrier at us. If a torture policy results in creating even more terrorists, it's a bad policy.

This is why (b) needs to be integral to the policy. If I'm in charge, I want the freedom to torture people in circumstances where lives can be saved, but I don't want anyone to know about it. So here's how it should work: The president as well as several levels below him need to have plausible deniability. The policy needs to be that if someone finds out about the torture, only the torturer and perhaps his/her direct superior take the heat. After all, if many lives are at stake, sacrifice may be required of not just the tortured but the torturer too. If I'm some jail guard and I can save 3,000 lives by waterboarding (of COURSE waterboarding is torture) my prisoner, HIS sacrifice is called for, and MINE (in the form of firing, or prosecution) may also be called for (but only if it gets out). If it's worth torturing someone it's obviously worth losing my job over. It seems like this tactic (of blaming it on the guards) was tried at Abu Ghraib with modest success, but the problem there was that they weren't strictly obeying (a). They were torturing with no promise of lives saved.

This kind of secrecy condition is what Bush has been lacking. Why the hell won't he and his attorney general(s) just come out and say that torture (including waterboarding, etc) is utterly impermissible?? They're obviously not allergic to lying, so what's the deal? I think they may be inept utilitarians.

I know this sounds awful, and I probably just ruined by chances of getting elected to public office, but unless you're a "respect for persons though the sky may fall" nut, where have I gone wrong?

One place to object might be that Bush isn't the kind of person to be trusted with this power. He's a power-hungry, slightly delusional, child, and yes, this makes me nervous too. But I actually think that my torture doctrine, if followed well, would be self regulating. Bush HAS abused his power, and he's taken heat for it. Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are an absolute disgrace not because they torture people there, but because they're not discriminating enough about WHO they torture. %80 of the prisoners (perhaps even more) have been released from Guantanamo without charges, which means that basically they had the wrong guys. By being careless with who we torture we've lessened our ability to successfully get information out of the right guys. And obviously we've made everyone mad at us (the U.S.).

So my torture policy would be rarely used. As I say, one needs to be very confident in both the veracity of the info and the payoff (lives saved). Torturing people willy-nilly as Bush has done is self-defeating. This hopefully makes me seem less of a monster. It allows me to forcefully disapprove of both Guantananmo Bay and Abu Ghraib. No one should be humiliated and tortured for no reason. Such evils are only permitted in the rarest of circumstances.

Any thoughts?

Episode 121

2007-11-14T20:28:00.000-05:00

One Laptop per Child

2007-11-12T14:02:00.000-05:00

Because I know one of the power players in the OLPC organization (I this for the sake of full disclosure) I've been following their effort to design and manufacture a $100 laptop to be made available to the world's poor children.

It seems to me that this has the potential to be a world-changing force for good, but in discussing it with peers I've encountered almost universal skepticism, disdain, and eye-rolling. Since they've rolled out a give one - get one program I thought this was a good time and place to mount a philosophical defense of the effort.

Here are some objections I've heard:
-poor children don't need laptops, they need food and shelter.
-"handouts" are almost universally under-appreciated and squandered.
-the laptops replace schoolbooks in government spending, but are more easily broken or lost (or stolen) than books.

The second two are economic and sociological concerns, so I'll quickly comment on those first, leaving the philosophical angle of the first question for last. It is true that when governments purchase these computers, they are spending money that would have otherwise gone towards text books. So it is worrisome to think of a student who loses his laptop in the first week, finding himself without school books for the next three years. Similar concerns of theft also might arise. The laptops are cute and cuddly in the hopes that they will be universally recognized as "for children," hopefully thereby preventing a robust black market from forming. Note that a given geographic location will be flooded with these things (literally one per child) so the thought is that any adult seen with one would be immediately recognized as having having gotten it illegitimately. As far as this being a "handout" program, meaning that the kids will be less apt to care for the laptop than for something that they have earned, aren't most items acquired by kids "handouts"? Perhaps there is a significant difference in the way an adult treats something they've earned versus something they've been given, but kids hardly earn anything at all! They acquire things from their parents and (in the case of books and pencils) from school, and I'd imagine they'd treat all such handouts more or less the same. If someone wanted to launch a serious objection on these grounds, however, I'm all ears.

The more serious objections from from philosophical worries about giving aid. Conservatives may see this as another hopeless liberal plan to ignore market forces and try to raise the quality of life in the third world by giving, giving, giving (perhaps along the lines of the "handouts do no good" objection). Liberals may see this as misallocation of aid, passing over goods such as food and medicine in favor of luxuries. I think both worries are off base.

First, the liberal worry. Some may think that our obligation is to provide what is most immediately needed by people in the third world. This will of course be food, medicine, and shelter. Money spent on laptops would be better spent on more essential goods, the thought goes. But with a nod to the conservatives, let me point out that unless efforts are made to alter the causes of the squalor, putting band-aids on the wound is doing little good. Picture a machine that makes something fragile on a conveyor belt - lightbulbs, say. The machine is left on, and the conveyor belt keeps running, lightbulbs smashing on the floor as they reach the end. You arrive at the scene and find yourself at end of the conveyor belt, so you start catching the lightbulbs and laying them delicately on the floor. You tire, however, and realize that unless someone turns the damn machine off, the bulbs will come faster than you can catch them. If you turn off the machine yourself you'll be letting X number of bulbs smash (bulbs you could have saved). Surely if you're alone you'll eventually decide to sacrifice a few bulbs and turn the machine off. Giving kids these laptops, I think, will help create a middle class in a given country in as soon as 15 years time. During those 15 years you might imagine that many lives could be saved if the money had been spent on food and medicine, but you would not have cultivated a middle class. As the saying goes, "teach a man to fish..." For this it would certainly be worth some moderate frustration and heartaches in the present day with lost and stolen laptops, and forgone spending on other opportunities.

This helps with the conservative worry. These aren't mere handouts, these are culture-altering, economy-altering handouts. The software on these machines is quite impressive, and kids learn so fast, so imagine the world 15 years from now when kids in rural peru, afganistan, and nigeria have learned not only math and history, but computer programming and english (more advanced with the audio pronounciation tools). Imagine how sophisticated the third world will be in 15 years when every kid in country X has had instant and immediate access to the internet. In my view, this is teaching them to fish, not giving them fish.

The laptops aren't $100 yet, but more like $200. This is just a function of production numbers, though. The more that get ordered, the lower the cost will become. This is why they're letting americans and canadians buy them for a short period of time (you spend $400 and they give you one while donating one to a poor kid). Hopefully then they'll have the production costs down.

It's obvious that I'm somewhat idealistic about this. Perhaps it will be an utter failure despite my optimism. But I think there's enough there for people on all sides of the "giving aid" debate to be supportive of the project.

Look here for a favorable review
and here for a 60 minutes report

Episode 120

2007-10-10T21:43:00.000-04:00

Intuitions about property please

2007-10-08T12:44:00.000-04:00

Suppose private property is justified. Take that as a datum.

Here is my question: What intuitions/settled judgments must a theory of property account for in order to be the right theory of property?

Here are a few jumbled thoughts:

1. Replaceability

The right theory of property will recognize the difference between external, physical objects that can, and those that cannot, be replaced without moral loss.

Consider the case of objects we possess for purely instrumental reasons. I have a screwdriver set at home. If you were to replace it with a just-as-good set of screwdrivers, I don't think there would be anything wrong with that (holding other things constant). Many things are like this. What we want is that the object serve some purpose, goal, project, or aim. If you can find a substitute that will do just as well, then we have no moral complaints with replacement.

I also have a watch that my grandfather gave me. You couldn't replace that with an object that is just as good, since no object, other than that one, will be just as good. I don't care that it tells time, that's not what matters to me when it comes to this watch. What matters is that my grandfather gave it to me. The originality of that object matters to me. Some people claim that this is true of Picassos and the Mona Lisa, of the Wayne Gretzky rookie card, and the pen that John Hancock used to sign that piece of paper Americans go crazy about.

2. "Scalability"

I don't know what to call this exactly, but here is the upshot: The right theory of property should recognize that some ownership relations are more important than others. The right theory of property should be sensitive to the difference, for instance, between my first and only dollar, and your million-and-first dollar. Or, if we think that it shouldn't be sensitive to this, to the difference in moral weight between your owning your home and your owning your screwdriver. The latter matters less.

The right theory of property will be "scalar"--it will note and explain the fact that some ownership relations matter more than others, that ownership relations come with different moral weights.

3. Instrumental and non-instrumental

The right theory of property will note and explain the difference between objects we own (and want) for purely instrumental reasons, objects we own (and want) for instrumental reasons and for other reasons, and objects we own (and want) for purely non-instrumental reasons.

Replaceability might track this. Purely instrumental objects will be replaceable, while non-instrumental objects may or may not be replaceable.

Got any other intuitions about the right theory of property?

Episode 119

2007-09-28T11:16:00.000-04:00

The Non-moralized account of Coercion and Rational Persuasion

2007-09-27T14:09:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking about coercion lately. You might even say that I have been coerced into thinking about coercion by the assignments that I have been given in class. Or you might not. That's a bit of why I'm writing this post.

To begin with, I will be referencing Denis Arnold's conception as of his paper with Bowie "Sweatshops and Respect for Persons" in 2003. He plans to update the conception that he uses in this paper, but it is pretty close to his current view, so I think it's legitimate to discuss it. Some of you will be at least a little familiar with the paper from our class with Jeff a few semesters back at BG. In any case, I'll give a little refresher on the concept of non-moralized coercion and the idea of the "coercive will" that Arnold uses. Then I'll argue that coercion is much more wide-spread than even the non-moralized version of coercion may be prepared to admit. It might not make any difference that this is the case, but it will be helpful to finally stomp out the remnants of the "coercion = bad" framework.

A non-moralized conception of coercion is what it implies. Coercion exists (when a coercive will exists) but the fact that an action is coercive does not imply that the action is morally "bad" or "wrong." If the action is to be bad or wrong it is necessary that there be something additional in the equation which adds the bad and the wrong. This conception is much better than the older (and maybe more common) idea that coercion is wrong because there are plenty of times we would say that someone was coerced and it was good that this happened.

Consider the case of a police officer who wrestles down a man who is beating his wife in public and arrests him. This is fundamentally different than the paradigm case of coercion in which an armed individual gives you the choice between your $$ and your life. In both cases the choice has not been left up to the agent. The criminal goes to jail and the victim of the robber hands over the wallet. One is a justified use of coercion and the other is not.

Additionally there are two sorts of coercion at work here. In the first case the criminal is overwhelmed by the cop and forced into handcuffs and taken to the clink. This is brute physical coercion. There is no question that this is coercion, but the question of moral good is left open until one fills in the appropriate blanks with other good- or bad-making qualities. In the second case the robber has used psychological coercion on the agent. He has not held the agent down on the ground and taken the wallet. Instead he has given the person a choice between his $$ and his life. I'll assume that he's not offering Chuck Norris this choice, and that the agent is steamrolled into handing over the wallet. His coercion was of the will or the mind and not of the flesh. This is the fundamental difference.

What makes psychological coercion distinct from rational persuasion (in Arnold's view) is that a coercive will is involved (page 229). This has two parts. The first is that "the coercer must have a desire about the will of his or her victim which can only be fulfilled through the will of another person." The second is that "the coercer must have an effective desire to compel his or her victim to act in a manner that makes efficacious the coercer's other regarding desire."

This sort of coercion is juxtaposed with rational persuasion. Usually, it is seen as better to rationally persuade someone than to employ psychological coercion. (I think that this is also the case in Arnold's view, but it's unexpressed.) The non-moralized view of coercion does not leave room for this juxtaposition.

What is the difference between a desire to persuade another to your point of view and a desire to compel another to act (think, in my example) in a manner that makes efficacious the coercer's other regarding desire? What is a desire to persuade other than a desire that your actions or thoughts mirror my own or that they mirror some act or thought that I want you to have?

One answer is that in one case I set out a particular penalty (shooting you for your wallet) which will come about should you not acquiesce to my demand. This is the answer that Arnold gave me in the context of employer/employee relations.

In this context it is coercive (says Arnold) if I say to a worker: "If you don't meet your quota then I'll fire you." It is not coercion if I say to a worker: "Come on. If you don't meet your quota then I will be behind in my production quota and if it continues I will have to let you go."

I don't see a difference here. The second way of dealing with the worker's inadequate production is nicer, but it says the same thing, i.e. "If you don't meet the quota I will fire you."

So, here's the conclusion: If you are intent on persuading someone to your point of view you are coercing them via rational persuasion. It has the interesting consequence that every time I engage in persuasion, say a philosophical discussion*, I am in possession of a coercive will and I have an intent to coerce. This doesn't say anything negative about philosophical argument in general. I am aiming at good ends when I coerce you. After all, if you do not side with me you are in danger of irrationality, inconsistency, or worse.

What do you think about that, folks?

*Also, not all philosophical discussion is like this. Sometimes we aren't defending our deeply held beliefs or convictions or even positions that we are confident about. We are just hashing it out and shaking the concept to see what falls out. I doubt that there is much coercion involved there.

Episode 118

2007-09-15T14:45:00.001-04:00

So, this is the first of the new ones. For those of you who enjoy Moose and Dude, here's some incentive to post on the blog: New episodes will appear immediately following all (and only) new posts.* Now, some wise acre might be thinking "But, Faraci, each of your posted episodes is a new post, and thus you must post constantly." False, wise acre, because I meant other kinds of posts.

*This has some caveats: Of course, if there are a whole slew of new posts and I can't keep up with the writing, there may be some lag. And if I'm not on the blog and two people happen to post right after one another before I can insert a comic, so be it. Also, if there is a severe lag in posting, I may post some comics anyway.

Episode 117

2007-09-12T02:34:00.001-04:00

This is the last Moose and Dude I did last year (and never published). It's not very good, but I have a few more and I'll start putting them up on my site again soon (assuming I can keep it up). Most of the new ones probably won't be philosophy jokes, but I'll still post them here if people want.

Moral Deliberation

2007-08-29T14:38:00.000-04:00

Hi all... Thought I'd start off the year's first true post...

So, I'm working on a paper for Steve Wall and I'd love a bit of help on a couple of questions...

First: Can we think of any reasons NOT to admit the rationality of a certain degree of skepticism with regard to our own moral deliberative capacities? It seems to me almost obvious (which is a sure sign I've overlooked something), that we ought to recognize the possibility that we're wrong when we come to moral judgments. Moreover, I'm thinking, its got to be almost rationally necessary to recognize this possibility... i.e., its a rational defect not to realize the possibility that we're wrong. N.B. I'm just assuming the falsity of things like expressivism and the like which turns all moral assertions into truths no matter what. [EDITED: In deference to the well-resting of Charles Stevenson in his grave... I retract the "into truths no matter what" - leaving it in place only so all can see my shame. For laziness' sake, I'll hope the reader knows what I was after and leave it at that]

Second: I'm wondering about the "starting points" we take our cues from in moral deliberation. After a fashion, for instance, Rawls construes these as our "considered judgments" but we could certainly well think that thats not really the best place to start... But, it seems to me, we've certainly got to start from 'somewhere', since the denial of that seems to indicate that our moral deliberations are 'a priori' in such a way that, carrying out such deliberations, we'd be unable to come to justified conclusions about concrete moral matters. Clearly we do come to such conclusions, so, are we starting from something like Rawlsian considered judgments? An abstract background conception of the "good life" that, for the purposes of the deliberative process, has to take the form of an unchallenged assumption (if only provisionally)? How do we start the process rolling so to speak? And, relatedly, what justifies using the starting-points that we do, whatever they are? Is there a "best" place to start? Would starting from there, wherever it is, and deliberating with perfect rationality, necessarily yield true moral judgments? Or is the 'best' place still inadequate to that task?

Third: Assuming the rational demand for a certain degree of moral skepticism, can we nevertheless say that perhaps our moral conclusions, imperfect though they might be, at least might have 'something' right about them (think like a Millian partial-truth)? i.e. does skepticism necessarily imply that we're entirely wrong, or just that we're at least always 'partially' wrong in some way, and that we just don't know which part it is? Moreover, can we justify, on such grounds, the prima facie acceptance of other disagreeing moral views as themselves probably partially-right? Can we then go on to think that, perhaps, in encounters with others of this sort in situations of disagreement, we might have some rational hope of making at least some epistemic 'progress' even if we think that we'll never get morality "totally right"?

Sorry its a bit inchoate at the moment... if it makes anybody feel better having to sort it out, its only a bit more coherent in the fully-expanded version of the paper as it stands right now....

I'd love anybody's thoughts, and any suggestions for articles to look at would be more than welcome too....

Thanks! Happy start-of-the-year!
Corwin

citing unideal observers

2007-07-11T19:33:00.000-04:00

just a quick note to say that I ended up citing faraci's post (and its comments) on thought experiments and metaphysical impossibility in a paper I'm writing on Locke and personal identity. thanks to everyone involved as it tied up what would have otherwise been a loose end for me. :)

Has anyone else used ideas from the blog for papers?

If there is any convention for citing blog posts please let me know

cheers
peter k

X-Phi: Parfit's baby (help!)

2007-06-02T15:19:00.000-04:00

Ladies and gents, a call for help.

In Wall's class, we discussed the case of Parfit's baby. The case is this:

A doctor tells a husband and wife that if they decide to have a child within the next two weeks, that child will be born with some deformity, or some problem (say, with only one leg). This deformity/problem will not make it the case that life is not worth living, but will make life more difficult than otherwise for the child. However, if they wait a month, they will have a perfectly healthy baby. The parents are too impatient, and for no good reason decide not to wait. Sure enough, a baby is born without a leg.

The questions are: 1) Are the parents blameworthy? (Yes, No, Who knows?), and 2) Does the child, many years later, have a grievance against her parents? (Yes, No, Who knows?).

I think most people will answer 1) Yes, they are blameworthy (they really should have waited to give their child the best possible future) and 2) Yes, the child does have a grievance or reason to be angry.

The problem with the second answer is that, if the parents had waited, it would not be the *same* child, but a different one. The child with one leg would not be alive if the parents had waited. But we've agreed that that child's life is still worth living, so the child herself would rank living-with-one-leg-fewer higher than not-living-at-all (and maybe all of us have reason to give this ranking than some other).

This leaves us with tough options. Do we keep our original intuitions and try to explain away the apparent problem? Do we claim that most people are mistaken when they say that the child has a grievance (and maybe lean on the indeterminacy of identity in pre-birth cases to explain the error)? Or some other option?

I would like to run an experiment with this question, and one other. This other question is intended to be structurally identical to the first, with only one major difference--the persons in the scenario have a past, and a clear identity. I could use help formulating this second question, so I'll give you what I've got so far.

It is the year 2,200. Scientists are looking at all the people who have (properly) cryogenically frozen themselves, all two of them, Jones and Smith, and are ready to defrost them. Alas, they can only defrost one at a time, through a process that lasts a year. Alas, alas, they also know that the equipment used to freeze them will soon fail, making it impossible to defrost more than one person. Looking at the frozen Jones and Smith, they see that Jones is missing a leg, while Smith is perfectly healthy and perfectly fine. Knowing that Jones' life will not go as well as Smith's, but will still be worth living, they decide to defrost Jones.

The questions are the same: 1) Are the scientists blameworthy? (Yes, No, Who Knows?) and 2) Does Jones have a grievance? (Yes, No, Who Knows?).

I suspect that in this case most will answer "Yes" to 1, but "No" to 2. That would present us with an asymmetry.

My questions to you are: 1) Are there differences in the second case that muck up this possible experiment? That is, is the second case different in more than one relevant respect (that being the pre-existence of Jones and Smith in the past, versus the "newness" of the child)? (If so, can it be adjusted or changed?) and 2) What do you have to say about these cases?

The lego Bible

2007-05-14T16:34:00.000-04:00

While I ponder Ben's last post, here's something I told him about a few weeks ago. The Lego Bible. It's hard to stop once you get going. For more lego creativity you might google "lego porn" but I'm far too ashamed to provide you with the link here.

An Intersection of Social and Distributive Justice?

2007-04-30T08:24:00.000-04:00

In a recent article in the New York Times entitled "For $82 a Day, Booking a Cell in a 5-Star Jail," I learned that some offenders in California can apply to and, with the permission of a judge, pay between $75 and $127 per day to serve jail sentences at cleaner, quieter facilities with more inmate privileges. Offenses must be minor, as the article's author notes, "Carjackers need not apply." The standard profile for an offender is a male in his late 30's who has been convicted of DUI and sentenced to a month or two.

There are several reasons why one might think this was a good idea. For minor offenders, entry into the California jail system is entry into an overcrowded world of gangs, racial violence, and hardened offenders. The article mentions that many areas with the system are under judicial review. One can see the benefit to the county of not hardening minor offenders, and certainly the idea of offsetting prison expenses where possible seems like a good idea.

Nonetheless, critics argue, this seems to compromise the "blindness" of justice since not all offenders can afford this "5-Star" treatment. Imagine two minor offenders, each with no prior record, and each convicted of a 90 day DUI offense. That each might serve that sentence at a better or worse facility according to one's ability to pay seems to some a violation of equality under law.

My own sense is that this is probably okay for two reasons. First and most importantly, if sections of the existing jail system are broken and others are not, then I see no reason to propose a duty to stay in the worse relative to the better. Justice makes no demand that we submit to an unjust punishment when a just one is available, and I would argue that the additional hardships incurred dysfunctional prisons constitute an additional punishment that distorts the justice of the original sentence. If the injustice of that additional punishment were inescapable and universal, then one might factor it into one's sentencing and adjust sentences accordingly. However, that the hardships and privileges varies within the same system means that there can be no requirement from justice to serve one's sentence in a dysfunctional facility when a properly functioning facility is available.

This is not to endorse the increased privileges at these facililites. The upper limit of such privileges should be no higher than that in a normal and/or dysfunctional prison if we intend that the justice in punishment is blind. Pay-to-stay prisoners should not be allowed out of the prison to work, and laptops and iPods should not be available to them either as long as these privileges are not afforded to conventional prisoners. Indeed, there might be good reasons to afford additional entertainment privileges to conventional prisoners if one thought it might pacify violent impulses and possibly afford short-term relief for some of the dysfunctions related to prison violence. That speculation aside, if the pay-to-stay prisons more closely approximated what we thought an ideal prison should look like, with privileges perhaps constrained to selected books and materials with which to write, then it would be even clearer that justice does not require that we submit to an unjust punishment when a just one is available.

Lacking such duty, one could say there was no reason to settle the questions of limited space by ability to pay rather than, say, by random assignment within the same profile of minor first-time offenses. However, this raises other questions, which brings us to my second reason. If normal inmates do not have to pay to stay in jail, then these inmates should not either if we're really talking about justice being blind. That they do, and that they must apply to do so, means that the inmates release consent to be treated unequally in the matter of their property (conceived of as a political right) in exchange for a right to serve their sentence in a properly functioning penal setting. In other words, I argue that contrary to the appearance of a merely economic transaction, this is a modification of the social contract that lasts for the specified duration of the inmate's sentence. The additional funding to the penal system that allows for the hiring of more guards or improvements to the facilites is a public good, and forcing an inmate to incur this greater burden without their consent would be just as partial an application of justice as the original worry suggests.

Is Free Speech a Claim Right?

2007-04-21T10:28:00.000-04:00

Jon Miles and I have had a running conversation about free speech rights, and recently our attention turned to the Dixie Chicks. In 2003, they criticized the president during a concert in Britain, and immediately felt a backlash from country music fans and radio stations who refused to play their music. Lipton pulled their sponsorship from the Chicks' 2003 world tour, and Wal-Mart pulled their music from its shelves. In response, they produced another album featuring the single "Not Ready to Make Nice," and effectively recreated their fanbase after being embraced by the Hollywood Left. Their new patrons in Hollywood apparently felt so moved by the whole thing that they recently lionized the Chicks in a documentary called "Shut Up and Sing" that Jon and I watched at the suggestion of Steve Wall.

Where all this interests me is with respect to the response offered by the Chicks. Their belief, so the documentary illustrates, is that Wal-Mart and the radio stations who refused to play their music were censuring their right to free speech. This was curious to me. Does someone else's free speech right require my participation in their speaking? I presented Jon with the following thought experiment inspired by a discussion with Corwin Carr.

Let's say that I'm a music distributor of some sort, that I'm very liberal, and that I'm very good at what I do. In fact, I have a large majority share of the market, and in some places there are no other outlets for some artists if I do not bring their music to the market. Recently, a popular female music group from Maryland called, say, the Yankee Babes, offered critical comments on Nancy Pelosi's recent visit to Syria. "We're with you good people," they say to an audience in Austin, "and we're ashamed that the Speaker of the House is from Maryland." (Yes, Speaker Pelosi has lived in and represents California, but she was born in Maryland, and I couldn't pass up the Yankee Babes thing.) Their comments are met with wild applause from that crowd, but I am offended, and do not feel at liberty by my conscience to continue distributing their music. Even if doing so would be lucrative for me, it would also make me complicit in publishing speech that I do not endorse, even if I do endorse the right itself. Let us further remove any financial contingencies, and suppose that I satisfied the opportunity costs incurred for the products produced and sitting in my warehouses. The Yankee Babes are financially no worse off than if they'd spent the time to produce an album that no one bought.

Have I censured free speech? It seems strange to say so since the right in question exists in parallel with, and is perhaps even thought to be an expression of, the liberty to order one's life and live according to the dictates of one's conscience. Speech rights are normally understood as negative rights that entail that I not interfere with the speaker's speaking, but if my participation is required for speech to reach an audience, does the right to free speech become a claim right such that others are entitled to it? This seems to confuse the right to speak with the right to be heard, the latter being what my participation as a distributor furnishes. The right to speak as a political right seems to entail claim rights only for the public spaces and forums that belong to everyone. Arguing that free speech rights entitle one to the activity or property of another seems therefore to argue against the principle those rights exist to protect.

Nevertheless, the Dixie Chicks seem to think that this is what happened to them. Unless and until I (or one who roughly agrees with me) gain the participation of others willing to distribute these arguments to at least as wide an audience, I'm concerned that this wider notion of the right to free speech will create many of the same problems it was originally intended to solve.

perfectionism and team sports

2007-04-05T17:47:00.000-04:00

I've wondered for a while why on earth perfectionists (or at least the one's i've come across so far) downplay the importance of the physical so much. The last few weeks of soccer league though have got me wonderering whether team sports (like soccer) might actually turn out to be MORE important perfectionist wise than studying philosophy and the like.

When you think about it studying philosophy allows you to excercise and hone (sic?) various rational powers but team sports also do this (you have to think tactically, cooperate with others, understand and work within set rules, be creative) AND provide you with opportunities for physical perfection (which philosophy doesn't).

So on a perfectionist account it would be better to spend our lives playing soccer rather than studying philosophy. Unfortunately I have yet to find someone who will pay me to play soccer.

thoughts?

On Intuitions

2007-03-27T03:05:00.000-04:00

I had a chat with Faraci recently. His dissertation is all about why intuitions are not so good when it comes to arguments in ethics. David has a few reasons for his position, and I suggested another way of arguing against intuitions.

Here are the important assumptions. Suppose we agree that ethics has all the features that Anscombe and people like her think they do. These include things like overridingness, universal application, and similar things. That is, the truth about ethics is not merely conventional or subjective. It is at least partially objective, or objective in some sense (the details don't matter that much, what matters is the thought that whatever the right ethical view turns out to be, it won't be conventional).

So, yes, we think this. Now we want to see whether or not intuitions are useful for establishing the content of our ethical views.

We know that, for instance, our mathematical and scientific intuitions are not always able to establish or get at the truth of math or science. There are other ways of establishing the truth, and it is curious, but not really useful, to find out that at least some people's intuitions get awfully close to the truth. We have other ways of figuring out what is true when it comes to science and math. Calculators settle the issue of what 12,222 multiplied by 17 is. What you intuit doesn't. Similarly with science.

If ethical intuitions are in the same category as scientific or mathematical intuitions, then this bodes ill for the role of intuitions in ethics. What we would need is an explanation for why ethical intuitions manage to capture "objective" facts, while our scientific and mathematical intuitions do not. We would need to do this while maintaining that intuitions are to ethics what calculators are to (some) math. This is probably a difficult task.

Intuitions, however, seem to be pretty useful when it comes to things like language. Whereas intuitions about math and science tend to fail, intuitions about language often get it right. One explanation for this is that language, unlike math and science, is purely conventional. The truth about what a word means, and what grammatical structure is correct hinges crucially on a complicated story about the in-practice use of language. Languages change, evolve, and are different in different areas. Provided you want to play the communicating game, you had better adhere to the local conventions about meaning.

The trouble for those of us who are keen on ethical intuitions is this:
1. Science and math are objective
2. Intuitions about these things fail
3. Language is conventional
4. Intuitions about language succeed
5. Ethical intuitions either capture the objective truth (and so we need to know why they get this whereas science and math intuitions fail) or;
6. Ethical intuitions capture the truth only if ethics is conventional (and so we have to abandon what we originally agreed to--namely, overridingness and universal applicability).

(A little note of clarification: I don't think that science is entirely objective, I'm just putting myself in the shoes of someone who would. Secondly, I'm not sure whether or not I think ethics is objective, or merely conventional. Probably conventional, but that's not the point of this post).

Intuitions and Metaphysical Possibility

2007-03-21T20:25:00.000-04:00

In a recent paper, I offered my readers the following thought experiment:

"You are in the kitchen one day with your spouse and, suddenly, everything around you freezes. Your spouse stops moving, the clock stops ticking, the crickets stop chirping, but you continue to move normally. Suddenly, a man walks into the room. He explains to you that he is a time-traveler from the future. He takes you on several time-traveling trips with him and convinces you beyond any doubt that he has the power of time travel he claims to have. When you finally return to the kitchen, he informs you that when he leaves and time begins to move normally for everyone else again, he needs you to kill your spouse. If you do not, he explains, he will travel five years into the past and kill your spouse himself."

The purpose of this thought experiment was to probe my readers' intuitions on this story, with an eye towards making an argument about the unreliability of our intuitions when we are confronted with temporally abnormal situations.

After reading the paper, someone objected that I should not have used this thought experiment because it is not metaphysically possible. When I heard this, I was rather surprised, not because I disagreed about the possibility of this example (though I don't think it is metaphysically impossible as it stands; it is just metaphysically impossible on the most natural reading of it), but because I don't tend to think that it always matters whether or not thought experiments are metaphysically possible. Of course, if the goal of the thought experiment is, for instance, to find out what we should or should not do in a given situation, it is pretty silly to offer a situation that could never happen. But given that the end goal here was somewhat tangential to the intuitions themselves, the question of possibility never occurred to me.

Anyway, the point of this post is to find out what everyone else thinks. Should our thought experiments always be metaphysically possible? If not, is it always preferable that they be so? If not, should I still have used one in this particular instance? Inquiring minds want to know.

Coulter and the Moralistic Fallacy

2007-03-08T11:31:00.000-05:00

Ann Coulter recently had a moment of rediculousness, and the ensuing controversy has provided an opportunity for philosophers to step in and clear something up. Whether or not her joke was funny is irrelevant to its morality. This is D'arms and Jacobson's version of the "moralistic fallacy." They rightly point out that the "comic moralist" is mistaken when they find a joke objectionable and infer that the joke wasn't funny.

Many of the commentators who've stepped in to say that Coulter was out of line have simply said that this kind of hateful joke isn't funny, but this is just wrong. I actually think it was a bit funny. If Bill Maher had said it about Ken Mehlman (the slightly effeminate former RNC chair) all the liberals would have loved it. But thinking that it was funny doesn't stop me from thinking that it was a highly innappropriate and obnoxious thing to say given the context and the audience.

Her defense has basically been to say that all those who've complained just don't have a sense of humor. But this is even more rediculous! Just becuase your joke is funny doesn't give you free reign to say it whenever and wherever you want. I have a sense of humor, and I even think it was funny (if just a little), and I also think she's a hateful witch who shouldn't have said it in public.

So for those who worry that philosophy has nothing to add to the affairs of laypeople, I offer this point. The moralistic fallacy is pretty common, and recognizing the problem could allow people to debate the actual issues, and not whether or not the joke was funny.

Boo!

2007-02-28T15:01:00.000-05:00

I found this through a post on the EP blog, but I thought it was cool enough to warrant its own post here.

The Polocracy

2007-02-25T15:42:00.000-05:00

This post should be of interest to anyone who cares very much about democracy. I admit, this isn't exactly me, but I do like fiddling with the rationality of voting, and coming up with schemes that might improve the performance of democratic systems.

I have in mind a particular scheme that I want to run past everyone. The idea is called "the polocracy." It is called that for fairly obvious reasons.

Some background: In the literature, people have come up with different ways to use lotteries for the purpose of elections. For instance, the traditional lottery voting system runs like this. Every adult citizen casts a ballot (just like now). Then we put all those ballots into a lottery, pick one, and that vote determines who will be the political representative. An alternative system, called jury voting, goes like this. We have a policy in mind. We run a lottery to pick 12 or so ordinary citizens. Those citizens make up a "jury." This jury then deliberates on and decides what policy will prevail.

These uses of the lottery focus on policy and on the elected. The polocracy is aimed at choosing the electors. It would work like this. Every adult citizen puts their name into a lottery. That lottery selects a certain number of persons, a number we have decided upon in advance. Those chosen by the lottery become eligible voters, those not chosen cannot vote in this election. This lottery would be run prior to every election, at every level (federal, provincial/state, local/municipal, and so on).

Suppose, for instance, that we decide on 50% for a presidential election. Following some regional formula, we run the lottery until we have 50% of the American population selected to cast a ballot in this election. They get to vote for the president, the others get to stay home with their children, work on their novel, or do something that actually matters (ha ha).

Why would anyone want a system like this, over the current system? I can see three reasons, although there may be many more. The first reason is economic. If we care about how much elections cost to run, reducing the number of voters may be one way to economize on the costs of running an election. While running the lottery would be a novel cost, I doubt very much that it would swamp the savings of having fewer polling clerks, polling booths, verification procedures, and so on. In addition, this proposal would also economize on opportunity costs. When you vote, you pay the price not only in terms of gas and maintenance for your car to get to the polling booth, but also in terms of what else you could have done with your time.

Secondly, we might see benefits which we can loosely describe as "rationality" benefits. It would not make people more rational, but it would improve the rationality of casting a ballot in the first place. When we consider what we should do, many of us think that it matters whether or not our doing something will have any effect on the outcome at all. This is as true in the case of elections, as it is in the case of, say, hiring new faculty. When graduate students have one collective vote, compared to the faculty, graduate students have less of a reason to even bother letting fellow graduate students know who they prefer. Many of them will disenfranchise themselves from the process. If graduate students had more of a say, we could anticipate greater involvement on the part of graduate students. This is what, relatively speaking, we do see on the part of faculty. And the smaller the faculty, the more involved are each of the members, in general. So if we care about the proportion of eligible voters who bother casting a ballot, we should take seriously limiting the number of participants in the process. The polocracy does this.

Thirdly, we might see perfectionist benefits from such a procedure. I can see two reasons for these benefits. The first is related to the rationality benefits above, and the second stems from what I think will be a feeling of "specialness" on the part of those chosen to cast a ballot. People are more likely to become more conscientious consumers of political information when their input is weighty. Consider again the graduate students in the above example. If they had more of a say in a process that is as important as hiring new faculty, we can predict that they will consume information about possible hires much more conscientiously and actively. So, too, with regular voting. Reduce the number of voters, and you improve, even if just a little bit, how much and how often regular folk look into politics. Secondly, I think it is intuitive to assume that, if you received a letter in the mail saying "you get to vote in this election!" when not everyone gets such a letter, you might be moved to consume more political information on account of feeling "special" or "important." This, of course, will depend on the proportion of citizens chosen as voters, but if the number is sufficiently small, we can predict perfectionist benefits stemming from both of the reasons I have mentioned.

The reasons not to have such a system are (inexhaustively) as follows. We might fret about the perceived legitimacy of a system like this. We might think that the system was rigged to pick certain people, or that the vote would have been different had everyone voted. This is reason to ensure the proportion is sufficiently high to avoid such worries, and sufficiently transparent to make only kooks (like me) think that the system is rigged or would have worked out differently had everyone voted.

For those of us who know a thing or two about polling "science," we might be convinced that the above worries are not as good as all that. After all, as the number of voters increases, the benefit, in terms of accuracy, has declining marginal benefits. There is no particular reason, if we care about accuracy of outcome, to have everyone vote, only very many people.

The most significant concern is probably related to equality of political power. While everyone has an equal chance of being chosen as an elector, once the lottery runs, those chosen have greater political power than those not chosen (at least with respect to selecting the representatives). This is probably a deep and significant worry. One reason not to fret so much is because we are already unequal. Some of us don't bother to vote at all, choosing to forego having a say at all. In practice, then, we are unequal. We might object that there is a significant difference between being told that you can't vote, and choosing not to vote.

I agree that there is a difference here. So consider the second fact: In Canada and the United States, certain regional formulas make people politically unequal anyway. For instance, according to the terms of Confederation in Canada, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and the other maritime provinces have a certain number of guaranteed federal representatives. There are, approximately, 100,000 people living in P.E.I. and they get two Members of Parliament (or one, I can't recall). Whereas, in Ontario, something like 200,000 people choose one M.P., the number is half that (or one-quarter that) in P.E.I. The Islander's have more political power (are twice as, or whatever, more politically powerful) in terms of choosing representatives. The same is true in the U.S. Very few of us stay up at night fretting about this inequality. That is reason to think that our concern for political equality is not the most important consideration, that other considerations might trump our desire for political equality.

The question then becomes: Do the potential benefits of a polocracy outweigh the potential burdens? Since I believe the only very serious worry is the worry about equality, we can rephrase this question as: Do the economic, rationality, and perfectionist benefits justify reducing political equality to some degree? I suspect that they do.

Evaluating Causal Directness

2007-02-23T14:09:00.000-05:00

Jaworski and I are in the initial stages of an experimental philosophy project. We have started discussing this project on the EP blog, and I thought I might bring it up here as well.

Many of you may recall that when Joshua Knobe came to visit, he discussed his work on the effect of moral/evaluative considerations on determinations of intentionality. It turns out, according to these studies, that when people are confronted with analogous situations involving good vs. bad outcomes, they will attribute intentionality differently depending on their evaluation of the situation (the CEO story is the one referred to in both Knobe and Nadelhoffer's talks).

Jaworski and I are interested in discovering whether a similar effect occurs in determining the directness of an individual's causal relation with some event. Thus, we have the following cases:

CASE I

Bill and Ted are playing catch with a football in their backyard. In spite of being warned off many times by their mother, they are playing very close to the house. Bill throws a long pass, it sails over Ted's head and flies through the kitchen window, hitting a door, which swings open, before the ball rolls to a stop.

CASE II

Bill and Ted are playing catch with a football in their backyard. In spite of being warned off many times by their mother, they are playing very close to the house. Bill throws a long pass, it sails over Ted's head and flies through the kitchen window, hitting a plate on the wall, which falls and breaks, before the ball rolls to a stop.

What we wish to test is whether people will say, in the first case, that Bill caused the door to open (rather than that he opened the door) whereas in the second case, it will be said that Bill broke the plate (rather than that he simply caused the plate to break). If this is the case, it seems that evaluative concerns may have come into play in determining the directness of Bill's causal relation to the door opening vs. the plate breaking.

Anyway, Jaworski and I will be running this experiment at some point in the near future, and are looking for feedback, both general and in terms of the wording/content of these cases.

Let's Get It (Re)Started In Here

2007-02-21T16:46:00.000-05:00

Allright, folks, it's been far too long since anyone has posted to this damned blog, and I'm sick of reading about Milliken getting published over and over again. For those of you who are contributors, please note that blogger has switched over to using Google accounts and you need to have to continue posting. Also, as Thomas Nadelhoffer just finished visiting our fine school, I have added the Experiemental Philosophy Blog to our list of buddies on the left there. Other than that, it's business as usual; or, rather, I hope it's not business as usual as that means no one will be posting.

That being said, I want to leave this thread open for suggestions as to the revamping of this blog, as I suspect that layout and the like have something to do with the lack of postings. In addition to trying to implement as many of your suggestions as possible, I will make a concerted effort to start posting the stuff I'm working on more often, and I hope others will do the same.

To that end, I will just mention that Nadelhoffer's visit has rekindled my interest in experimental philosophy, and Jaworski and I have plans for a couple of experiments we want to run. In addition to looking for feedback to our sample questions on the EP blog in the (near?) future, I expect we will look for feedback here.

John Milliken, published!

2006-10-03T13:25:00.000-04:00

I was browsing through the Southern Journal of Philosophy and I noticed a familiar name. I can't find the article online to link it, but perhaps our friend John would like to post it here. Or maybe not.

Either way, Congrats!

Unideal Observers

2006-09-27T09:20:00.000-04:00

According to this article a German production has been cancelled due to fears that it would anger the Muslim community and perhaps incite riots. Fantastic. The opera contains a scene in which the king presents the heads of idols including Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha, and the Prophet Mohammed.

Is this possibly offensive? Sure. Does that make it bad? Nope. Art sometimes offends people. So does philosophy. Sometimes you need to make a statement or get the audience’s attention.

Someone in the article makes the comment that once we bend art to the stick of religion we are on our way back to the middle ages. They are completely correct. It’s a move that we can’t afford to make.

We ought not to make excuses for people who threaten violence like a schoolyard bully. You’re offended? Tough. Don’t go to the opera, change the TV channel, listen to a different radio station.

Is all exploitation "bad?"

2006-09-13T17:31:00.000-04:00

The question has been bugging me for a while. This was aggravated the other day when I was listening to a PETA rep on Maxim radio on my Sirius radio. The DJs had contacted her because of the comments they have made regarding Crocodile Steve Irwin.

They charge him with the exploitation of animals. An odd charge, given that he was a herpetologist who produced fantastic amounts of video which preached the saving and respecting of animals.

Are they wrong? Not on this first charge. He did make money from the display and handling of animals outside of the animal's natural environment. I suppose that this is a sort of exploitation. The Merriam-Webster gives two definitions of "exploit." The first is "to make productive use of." He certainly does this. In many senses of the word.

The question, then, is whether exploitation is a bad thing. This is where I think that they are off base.

Even if we agree that the animals are being exploited by Crocodile Steve it is odd to say that they are being harmed. He removes them from a bad situation (a literal State of Nature) and cares for the animals in a facility that is much like their own environment save for the absence of violent death and the presence of abundant and regular food. Our captive critters are not being harmed in a recognizable way. Their place in life seems to have been greatly improved via their exploitation.

It seems appropriate to juxtapose this case with that of some factory workers in 3rd world nations. The charge of exploitation is often leveled at the corporations which contract with the factories due to the fact that they do not pay the same wages in their country as they would get in the US. All the same, they are making (in many cases, but surely not all) fantastic wages in comparison to others in their society. By some reports they take these jobs because they are the best ones available.

Does the charge of exploitation pan out in either case? Do these cases show that exploitation is not always a bad thing? Do we need two new words in light of these realizations?

A welfare liberal libertarian?

2006-08-29T17:34:00.000-04:00

I sometimes consider myself a Rawlsian libertarian. Not always, but sometimes.

This is because I agree with the intuition that it is morally right that "we" (royal "we") have a responsibility to help the worst-off, the badly treated, and the trotted upon. We really *should* have welfare-like institutions.

I call them "welfare-like institutions" rather than just welfare for three good reasons. For one, we can't conclude from the fact that we have a moral responsibility to help the badly-off that it is some precise and specific institution that should do this. It's an open question whether the government is the right institution that will allow us to put our moral responsibility into practice. It just doesn't follow.

For two, moral responsibility implies a choice. There is a difference between a legal responsibility and a moral responsibility. Setting up a governmental welfare institution is to generate a legal responsibility, and not necessarily a moral one. We fail to act on our moral responsibilities if we are made to act in some way for fear of some evil befalling us. Like being sent to jail. Or being fined. Or getting grounded. A child is not acting morally when she shares her toys with her brother because she is under the threat of being grounded if she does not share. She acts morally when she chooses to share for the reason that she thinks it is the morally right thing to do.

The same is true with welfare. We do not act morally when we pay our taxes when we do so out of fear of being punished. We might if we do so out of a sense of moral responsibility.

And for three, it might turn out that non-governmental institutions will do the trick. This is an empirical question, and needs empirical studies to work. Maybe people will deny that this is true. Maybe charities and voluntary, non-governmental institutions will not be sufficient. Maybe. But we need to at least answer the empirical question, since governmental institutions come at a significant expense compared to equivalent voluntary institutions.

It's interesting to point out that Rawls himself, in the preface to the second edition of his A Theory of Justice (somewhere around pages 11 - 13), writes that he did not intend to justify the welfare state. To make sense of this claim we have to take the above three points into consideration. I take it that Rawls had something like the three things above in mind when he made this claim.

So that's one reason for thinking that a Rawlsian, or welfare liberal, libertarian is not entirely implausible. Here's another reason. This reason should appeal to ordinary welfare liberals from the left, and it is a reason that appeals to me.

Suppose the following is true. Suppose Bob, a welfare liberal, strongly supports a welfare state. His theory of justice demands the inclusion of a welfare state. Suppose he also virulently objects to a warfare state. His theory of justice says that war, in the overwhelming majority of cases, is morally illegitimate. Suppose further that Bob ranks his opposition to war higher than his support of government-run welfare. We might say that he considers the benefits of a welfare state at, say, 60, but the negative harm of a warfare state at -90.

I think Bob describes a great many Americans and Canadians who consider themselves on the left of the spectrum. We should help one another, even make people help one another, these sorts of people would say, but we should not engage in wars.

Follow me so far? Okay, here's the other important assumption I will ask you to grant for the sake of argument. Suppose that it is true that the governmental institutions we set up for the purposes of a welfare state have a 70 per cent likelihood of also engaging in war. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that governmental institutions are like that, for some reason.

Bob, the welfare liberal, makes the following calculation.

"If we set up a government, we can expect a benefit of 60. There is, however, a 70% chance of this government engaging in war, which would yield a harm of -90. If we multiply the probability of engaging in war by the harm of a war, we get -63. Subtracting the expected harm from the expected benefit yields a net expected benefit of -3."

Bob wants a welfare state. He is a genuine welfare liberal. But he really doesn't want war. He sings to himself, "War. Huh. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!" And he believes the lyrics. But his calculation has led him to the conclusion that he should expect a harm if we set up a welfare state, even though Bob wants that. What should Bob conclude? He should conclude that, in practice, we shouldn't have a welfare state (because it is likely to engage in war) even though, in theory, we should have a welfare state.
"If only we could have a welfare state without a warfare state," he laments to himself. "But I'm not a naive welfare liberal, I take empirical facts seriously, and I am honest about what I expect."

All I am trying to show is the possibility of a welfare liberal libertarian. I am making no claims about the status of the numbers used. If you adjust the numbers, you might conclude something else. Suppose you think the benefit of a welfare state is 70, rather than 60, for instance, keeping the probability of war the same. That would mean a net benefit of seven to our society. In that case, the welfare liberal should support government-run welfare, even though he can expect wars.

Whether or not any particular welfare liberal should fight for a libertarian society will depend on her beliefs about the probabilities, and her rankings of the relative benefits and harms of a welfare state as compared with a warfare state.

On what basis should she ground her probability claims? One approach would be to take a historical sample of liberal welfare states, and see how many of them also engaged in the sorts of wars that she strongly opposes. My (strong) suspicion is that the probability will be higher than 70 per cent.

I have abstracted away one other component of the argument for simplicity's sake, but I should at least mention it since it will strengthen my claim. The benefit that we have assumed comes without a probability assesment. But the benefit is not guaranteed. Welfare states make mistakes. Sometimes rich people get welfare. Sometimes poor people fall through the cracks. No welfare state is perfect. Thus, we must also downgrade the expected benefit of a welfare state by appeal to a probability of actually getting the benefit. That probability will be less than "unity" (as they say), or 100%.

There will be a less-than 100% probability of the benefit (welfare), just as there is a less-than 100% probability of the harm (war). It would be neat to put together a welfare liberal libertarian calculator, so that you could input your own preferred probabilities, and your own preferred relative benefit and harm assessments. I don't have the skills for this. But I wonder just how many welfare liberals would actually turn out to be libertarians, for non-traditional (or non-standard) reasons.

You would be, morally speaking, a welfare liberal. You would be, politically speaking, a libertarian.

Congratulations

2006-06-13T23:11:00.000-04:00

A hearty congratulations to Arthur on his nuptials. May this union bring utility by the bucketsful.

Oak Tree

2006-05-25T16:59:00.000-04:00

While I was supposed to be writing my paper due tomorrow, I was thinking about a work of art that hangs in the Tate Modern in London. I saw it years ago, and it crosses my mind every once in a while. It's called "Oak Tree" by Michael Craig-Martin. It cheered me up today, so I thought I'd share with everyone.

It looks like this

It's simply a glass of water on a glass shelf, accompanied by a scripted "interview" which hangs below and to the left. This is the text of the interview.

The interview isn't meant to explain the piece, it is part of the piece. I find it hilarious.

On Vegans, carnivores, and ethics of persuasion

2006-04-22T21:26:00.000-04:00

So our little blog has been silent of late. For my part I apologize for falling down on the job. I committed to posting and I haven't been. Consider this my penance.

With Monica Gerrek's permission I would like to recount a conversation we had as a way of opening up a subject for discussion. At the BG conference on Practical Reason, I was eating a delicious buttered scone. I asked Monica if she had tried them. Her response was that she doesn't eat animal products. It was unexpected. (I haven't quite kept track of who's a vegetarian, who's a vegan and who's a steak loving minion of Satan). I immediately felt compelled to apologize. She quickly added, "But are they good? " To which I made a joke and said, "Well they were good, but not now!" She laughed and added to my joke, "I mean you know even though their immoral right?" I laughed and nodded. Then she felt compelled as well to apologize. About that time Michael Smith started talking. But something bothered me and it wasn't M. Smith's take of Davidson. I had apologized for eating the scone and Monica had apologized for pointing out that eating the scone was immoral. But why? What was my apology for? What was hers? Even more important than perhaps the psychological reason why we did apologize, should we? My apology was an instinctive response to causing Monica pain at seeing me eat a scone. Hers, she explained, was a response her past experience with non-vegans. It seems that many non-vegans have said that pointing out that the food they are eating is the result of heinous torture of the animals is not exactly the kind of garnish one wants for the meal. The mere act of convincing or reminding us of the ethics of eating (to use Singer's term) causes the non-vegan discomfort. So Monica said she tends to be sensitive to that.

So here's my question. Did I owe Monica an apology for the pain she ostensibly experienced even though I think (as a non-vegan) such pain is unwarranted? Did Monica owe me an apology for possibly causing me to consider the ethics of eating WHILE I'm eating? After all of this Monica and I considered a different problem. Suppose your a vegan and consider eating butter filled scones a travesty for the cows of the world. Should you apologize for ruining my scone tasting experience? If I say, "Not while I'm eating" are you obligated to reserve your proselytizing to another time when I'm up for debate not scones? Or could she still register her disapproval without giving me details about factory farms. Suppose I say, "I don't ever want to here anymore about the torture of the animals!" You are convicted that my actions are not just callous they are immoral. At what point do you owe me a moratorium on your vegan proselytizing?

The upshot to all of this is that it seems that the question of what tactics, timing, and when to stop are all very ethical sort of issues. They are concerned with what we owe to each other (and to ourselves) when we are strongly convicted of something and another person is not. (if Veganism doesn't engender these concerns insert your own conviction: Libertarians consider the issue was taxes or property rights) Here are some possible trajectories for this discussion. Suppose I'm a consequentialist. How do I calculate the consequences? If we are to maximize something like desire satisfaction who's desire satisfaction counts the most? Vegan, Carnivore, or the animals who would be saved torture if more people listened to Vegans? If respect is most important, doesn't the fact that the vegan seeks to convince the non-vegan by appealing to arguments about morals and animal rights, imply a sense of respect for the non-vegan even if that convincing is offensive. And vice versa? In other words, my offending you has everything to do with which of us is right. So offending you isn't the worse thing I could do to you and it certainly isn't disrespectful. Since I "picked on" consequentialists, I'll pick on my own ilk. How in the world would a virtue ethics approach this? Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the vegan and non-vegan are both phronimoi. They are both virtuous. It seems both could be. They are both respectful and kind, etc. I suppose the phronimoi would just know at what point their discussion was pushing the bounds of . . . what? Friendship? Respect? Magnanimity? If what is important is the kind of people we are supposed to be, then what is more central to character, friendship or our convictions?

I've purposely left any of my own conclusions or arguments out of this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I'm still working out my thoughts on what we owe to those we are trying to convince. Two, if I had to actually philosophize on every blog, I'd never get these stupid papers finished. And C I'm hoping I've missed something, or assumed something, or annoyed with my diatribe to the extent that it will get us all blogging again.

Noah Gives His Take on the Ethics of Bestiality

2006-04-03T23:34:00.000-04:00

Cognitivism or non-cognitivism?

2006-03-25T16:46:00.000-05:00

I'm allied with the non-cognitivist utilitarian camp of Hare/Singer/Frey but I'm not totally convinced of my loyalty on this one. Since I believe value can be boiled down to desire-satisfaction, there would seem to be a fact of the matter about whether someone's desire is being satisfied. Hence the statements "x is good" or "x is right" might seem to be analyzable as beliefs rather than desires (or emotive utterances) themselves. On the other hand, I find myself unpersuaded by any argument for cognitivism that I've come across. I'd be curious to hear where people stand. Can anyone offer a spirited argument for or against cognitivism?

Mark van Roojen Podcast

2006-02-19T19:41:00.000-05:00

This worked out better than I had hoped.

I think, eventually, we need to get an RSS feed, and get a podcast up and running. In the meantime, I provide you with our very first MP3 of a talk here at Bowling Green. Mark van Roojen popped by to tell us all about Moral Rationalism and Rational Amoralism [MP3]. Sound like fun? You bet! It was, it was. Just have a listen.

While listening, you should download this outline [PDF] of the talk. Mark points it out at the beginning of the talk, and thinks it is of great value while listening. I agree.

Polity Values Thought Experiment

2006-02-18T13:47:00.000-05:00

Fellow Bloggers,

I invite my fellow bloggers to reflect on the following matter. Admittedly this topic strides the boundary between legitimate political philosophy and mere fanciful daydreaming.

Say in some hypothetical democracy they carve text that expresses the polity’s normative ideals and values into the inner wall of the legislature. In this way policy makers are constantly reminded of the core political values that they serve, or that they can appeal to to make the hard decisions, or to settle collective doubts.

The obvious question is what should that text be? The idea is to coherently express, in as few words as possible, the core ideas of the good and just polity. One rule of this game is to limit your text to between 25 and 40 words. Here is my first attempt, followed by some very brief commentary.

1. Teamwork to make dreams come true.
2. Resolve conflict with constructive innovation and fairness.
3. Maximize the value of personal autonomy and responsibility.
4. Prevent the suffering of the innocent.
5. Avoid practices that degrade character.

The first principle or ideal is straight forward utilitarianism, but with a twist. Instead of maximizing welfare, maximize the satisfaction of dreams. This allows elements of ideals, inspiration, and sophisticated life planning.

#2 expresses the notion that conflict should be an invitation to reinvent and uplift deep assumptions and possibilities, not an invitation to violence. Failing that, just split the difference of burdens and move on.

A lot is going on in #3. I say liberties are practices that protect the value of autonomy, our ticket to the dignity-invoking kingdom of ends. This ideal also implies the good of political participation. Protecting responsibility can imply, at a minimum, desert values and personal development.

#4 is consistent with utilitarianism, maximin, dignity and virtue.

#5 is consistent with virtue and dignity as well.

I invite others to either attack my attempt at general polity-guiding text, or better yet, to submit your own!
Adam White

Rhetoric

2006-02-16T14:16:00.000-05:00

Considering all the stuff we know about argumentative strategies, you'd think we'd be above a little rhetorical manipulation.

Philosophy is fun, but it should be funner, c.f. bad grammer. I'm probably abnormal in my sensitivity to agressive argumentative strategies and the use of rhetorical manipulation. Afterall, I feel dumb all the time, and when someone tries to make me feel dumb without addressing my argument fairly, I can't help the overwhelming sensation to go cry in my office [or smash some teeth in]. Don't get me wrong, rhetorical manipulation is often quite useful, and it's often a great source of humor, see current administration for both types. But most of the time it's just annoying and unproductive. Sure it can get us immediate gradification--when our objectors storm off or become silent we're the winner right? Ultimately its use just makes one look like an ass; intellectual perhaps, but no less stinky butt. Further, it's use makes us bad philosophers.

I suspect that these argumentative strategies are unintentional, and so I doubt they'll go away. Heck, it's so prevalent in the literature and at conferences you'd think it was expected of us. But I'm inclined to think that it's in everyone's best interest in this department to call each other out when it happens, in class and in posts. Keep each other philosphically accountable, so to speak.

But perhaps I'm being overly idealistic to suppose that in a philosophy department we'd want to win our arguments based on soundness or cogency, rather than an appropriatly timed ad hominem or straw man (to mention some popular forms). Perhaps it's not in everyone's "best" interests after all. I'm open to counter-examples. Heck, I probably am one.

Any thoughts? (Note: I know I've even used some in this post, point them out!)

Superheroes

2006-02-12T15:25:00.000-05:00

I was in the shower this morning thinking about Superman.

No, no, it's not what you think. I had just read some article that referred to the ring of Gyges, and it got me thinking about human nature, and wielding power. So the amazing thing about Superman, as we all know, is that he's sort of all-powerful (though not invisible) but he never takes advantage of other people. Just think about how amazing that is! Can anybody say that they could be so restrained with Superman's powers? Also, he has an intuitive sense of right and wrong. He can quickly survey a scene and know what is the moral course of action. I concluded as I soaped my head (I have no hair, and thus no use for shampoo) that Superman was the perfect example for a virtue ethicist. He's been raised properly, and always picks the path of the golden mean (though his mean is going to be radically different from mine and yours). "He's perhaps to brave," you say, but I think he knows to keep his distance from kryptonite, does he not? He's not thinking about consequences, necessarily, when he acts, he just does what he thinks is right.

Then I got around to thinking about other superheroes. Batman's a consequentialist, of course. I don't know if he's a utilitarian or not, but certainly some kind of consequentialist. He can be a little brutal because he thinks it's necessary to achieve his ends. He doesn't have the moral perception that superman has, and while superman is optimistic about human nature, Batman is pessimistic. Batman, I think, is often inclined towards the extremes of many of the categories in which Superman finds a golden mean. But Batman is disciplined, and has a strong sense of duty. He kicks butt when he needs to.

Then I was trying to think of a Kantian superhero. Batman and Superman lie way too often to be Kantians. A Kantian superhero has got to be without a secret identity, then. What would he/she do, just run around treating people as ends in themselves, never as mere means?? Wonderwoman is good, because she doesn't have a secret identity, but I think she's more like superman, probably a virtue ethicist. Spiderman's a utilitarian, I think. The Green lantern? Aquaman? He's always looking out for the rights of sea-creatures, but they're not rational. Or are they...? Maybe he knows something we don't. Captain America? He doesn't exactly have a secret identity, its more like he left his old identity behind when he became captian america. He's also really into freedom, so that's good. Anyone have a suggestion? This is bugging me.

Psychological egoism and what we want

2006-02-09T10:51:00.000-05:00

Psychological egoism is the view that all individuals in fact do what they believe is in their own self-interest. This is *not* synonymous with the claim that all individuals in fact do what they want. ‘Want’ is not ‘self-interest’ by definition, contrary to what one of my furry-faced colleagues thinks. For it to be the case that these two concepts are essentially related the following bi-conditional would have to be true: if you want X, then X is in your own self-interest and if X is in your own self-interest, then you want X. While it is arguable that the second half of the bi-conditional is true, the first half of the bi-conditional is not true. I only need one example to show this: I want to smoke a cigarette right now. Smoking is not in my own self-interest, but I want it nevertheless.

Perhaps my furry-faced-friend does not have psychological egoism in mind, but a popular theory developed in the literature on moral psychology and moral motivation. One view suggests that in order to move someone all the way to action a *desire* must be present in the explanation of the individual’s behavior. This is not the thesis of psychological egoism and even the defender of this view must explain why some desires are different than others as in weakness of the will (she might, for example, appeal to higher-order desires).

Now of course ‘wants’, ‘desires’, ‘self-interest’, etc. are all terms of art and can be filled out in various ways. The key is to avoid rendering one’s own thesis trivially true. If you think ‘self-interest’ just means doing what you want, then you need to rephrase psychological egoism to say something like all individuals in fact do what they believe is in their own best-interest. In other words, if psychological egoism is just the view that individuals in fact do what they want, then you are not telling me anything substantive. For example, a prominent psychological egoist like Hobbes will say that an individual *in so far as she is rational* will want to get out of the state of nature.

Finally, it may be the case that psychological egoism is often in danger of collapsing into a trivially true thesis, but this is something the defender of the view is going to want to avoid, not embrace contra Mr. Furry Face himself.

Can beliefs be immoral?

2006-02-08T22:36:00.000-05:00

I had a chat outside of class with our man D. Shoemaker. At some point, we got on to the topic of the morality of belief states. David maintained that a belief, like "tall people are inferior to short people," can be immoral. I said that beliefs cannot be immoral. Here's a hasty outline of my position.

Morality, it seems to me, is about how we treat one another, not what we think of one another. What matters in morality is what we do, not what we think. Beliefs, all by themselves, cannot be moral or immoral. They just are.

Now you might think that if you believe something like "tall people are non-persons" and believe that "it is okay to kill non-persons" then you are likely to kill tall people. Is, however, the belief itself doing any sort of moral work? Or is it the killing of tall persons, and the connection between the belief and the action? It seems to me that all the work is being done by the treating of tall people in one way or another, and none by the thoughts floating in my head.

Take two cases.

Suppose I am a brain in a vat without any ability to communicate or otherwise impact the world around me. Suppose I think that tall people are non-persons. Is my having that thought immoral? I think that's silly.

Suppose there is a twin earth far, far away, with an impenetrable wall between it and our earth. Suppose I have beliefs about the agents (who are circles and squares) on twin earth. Suppose I think it okay to kill circles just for sport. What's (morally) wrong with my thinking that? The impenetrable wall makes it so that no one on either earth will ever have any sort of communication or interaction with one another. Can I have any beliefs about agents/things/whatever on twin Earth that are immoral? I don't think so.

Just to be clear, suppose all of the above beliefs are caused in the right way for moral appraisal. That is, no one is somehow "forced" to believe one thing rather than another because of evolution, genetics, compulsion, the way the brain is, and so on.

(A separate question: Does my position imply that intentions don't matter? You tell me, I don't know...)

Episode 116

2006-01-27T13:24:00.000-05:00

Sacred Space: Lawmaker Proposes a Ban on Protests at Military Funerals

2006-01-27T13:04:00.000-05:00

A lawmaker in Illinois is proposing a bill that would ban protests within 300 feet of funeral from funerals or memorial services. The bill is a response to the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka Kan. led by Fred Phelps. Phelps and his group contend that soldiers are dying in Iraq because God is punishing America for its acceptance of homosexuality. Their protests mostly involve holding up signs that say, "Thank God for dead soldiers" and at least one report of verbally engaging funeral attendees. (He's also sure the West Virginia mining accident has the Almighty's fingerprints on it for the same reason. WBC plans a protest soon).
Before I unpack some of the cool issues of ethics and free speech, allow me to exercise my freedom of expression: "Ahem . . . Fred Phelps, your teachings are destructive, irrational, deluded, and violate several important tenets of the historic Christian faith. Fred, God will not be pleased when you meet face to face." That felt good.
Now setting aside my libertarian concerns about hard cases making bad law, there seem to be a couple of good questions to consider here. The article mentions that the key to law will be whether the protest represents "content-based" or content neutral. If its content based--privileging one opinion over another--as it surely seems to be, then it is subject to strict scrutiny, meaning, it can be weighed against public safety and other concerns including profound offense (i.e. these are mourners; to protest in this way is profoundly offensive). So if the protesters are trying to privilege one opinion over another they are less protected than if they were merely reporting facts about something? I wonder if we can make a case for just the opposite. What's most important is the kind of speech that is content based. Nobody is too worried about content neutral speech if there is such a thing. (if ever there was a bad label for a concept, this is it.)
George Sher has argued in "Freedom of Expression in the Non-neutral State" that speech should be privileged over expressive action. Speech act theory aside, he thinks we can divide speech and action with enough percision to privilege speech over actions. If we can do that, could we draw a clear enough distinction between deliberative speech and purely expressive speech? Some philosophers have argued speech should be priviledged because it is closer to thought than action. (I think D. Jacobson makes this point concerning Mill.) Does that put deliberative speech-- the right to persuade others to think like you--closer to thought than expressive speech?
How would we define deliberative speech? Is it enough to say its speech that intends to argue a point with the goal being acceptance by the other party rather than merely expressing an opinion? Is there significant difference between statements like "Free Healthcare should be a right of all citizens." versus "Thank God for Dead Soldiers"? If so, could we argue that deliberative speech of an argumentative sort is more fundamentally altered by time, place, and manner restrictions than say expressive speech? Is it affected enough that we could make expressive speech subject to strict judicial scrutiny and privilege deliberative speech?
This would mean that deliberative speech would only be subject to a harm principle (ala Mill) where as expressive speech would be subject to an offense principle (ala Joel Feinberg). In which case, a ban on the Phelpian kind of protest would be vulnerable to consequential arguments--weighing concerns etc. After all, Phelps isn't really trying to convince funeral goers with statements like "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" He's trying to get his point on CNN. he trying to alter the perception in America. Legitimate as that is, he could do that lots of places other than in the faces of mourners. (I hear Larry King will interview just about anyone). One major objection to this argument would be that "deliberative speech" could include all sorts of manipulative, misleading, and incendiary speech. I mean does anyone consider most of what gets "soundbited" on the news from the president and congress consumate deliberative discourse?

playing with predicates

2006-01-26T08:12:00.000-05:00

The White house recently complained that the media had been calling the NSA spying campaign "domestic spying." It released this document explaining the proper usage of the words domestic and international:

Their standard:

Domestic Calls are calls inside the United States.
International Calls are calls either to or from the United States.

Domestic Flights are flights from one American city to another.
International Flights are flights to or from the United States.

Domestic Mail consists of letters and packages sent within the United States. International Mail consists of letters and packages sent to or from the United States.

Domestic Commerce involves business within the United States.
International Commerce involves business between the United States and other countries.

What I have not seen anyone point out yet is the asymmetry in predicate usage. In a domestic call the caller is contacting someone who is in the US. In a domestic flight, the flyer is flying somewhere in the US. Therefore, domestic spying should not be defined by what the "spyed upon" is doing, but what the "spyer" is doing. Domestic spying would be when the spyer is spying on someone in the united states. The government's point is that only one of the two parties is in the US, the other party has to be outside. But there are three parties! The application of "domestic" in their examples applies to the activity of the primary actor in relation to the location of another actor. Caller to callee, flyer to destination, spyer to spyee. I think, then, that they would have to admit (If they're interested in being consistent) that they are practicing domestic spying and international spying. They cannot in any honest way deny that that they are carrying out domestic spying. Certainly not given their own examples of how domestic should be used.

True story

2006-01-25T16:57:00.000-05:00

Man held for vandalizing Duchamp's "fountain" for performance art

I love it. I actually like Duchamp's fountain, but since there are seven of them (or something like that), I don't mind one or two being destroyed for the sake of ironic performance art. Although, I think he had the right idea last time by just urinating on it.

Brilliant blonde joke

2006-01-20T13:19:00.000-05:00

This one is rich in philosophical significance: Alex Gregory looks to have found the best blonde joke ever.

Episode 115

2006-01-20T02:28:00.000-05:00

Ethics and Statistical Analysis

2006-01-20T00:15:00.000-05:00

This post is partially inspired by Jonathan Miles' comments regarding the last Moose and Dude comic. However, I felt that it was too off-topic to continue in that thread and I hope it will warrant discussion on its own here.

Jonathan mentioned, and Arthur continued to discuss, the fact that certain aspects of Jonathan's argument hinge on empirical data. In particular, in order to measure the force of Jonathan's argument, one would, minimally, need to determine what, if any, connection exists between beastiality and the "slippery slope" of harm. This brought to mind a particular concern of mine in ethics. Presumably, one probable avenue for attempting to determine whether any such connection exists would be the use of statistical analysis. For example, one might attempt to discover a significant correlation between people who engage in beastiality and people who engage in particular harmful behaviours.* This, it seems, is a fairly popular way of doing things. For example, I'm sure many of us have seen the commercials that tell us that if we eat dinner with our children, they are less likely to drink or do drugs. Presumably, this statment is based on some statistics about families eating dinner together and underaged drinking and drug-use.

I have always found such statements extremely troubling, mostly because it seems to me that saying "There is a statistically significant correlation between X and Y" is NOT justification for saying "X makes Y more likely." Largely, this is because there are other factors that might be involved. In the case above, for instance, it has always seemed likely to me that a correlation in that case indicates, not that eating dinner with one's children will keep them out of trouble, but that many parents who are able to keep their children out of trouble through good parenting also eat dinner with them. Thus, if you are a terrible parent, you should not conclude (as the commercial seems to indicate) that if you start eating dinner with your child every night they will begin behaving well.

It seems to me that such cases are particularly problematic in the sort of psychological/ethical cases we are discussing here. If we were to discover a correlation between beastiality and harmful acts, would this really indicate that beastiality leads to such things? It seems to me just ask likely that the stigmatization of beastiality in our culture might make it such that only those who are otherwise troubled psychologically would engage in the activity. (Please note that these are just possibilities, I am not asserting any of this to be the case.) If this were, indeed, the case, then one might find that were beastiality not stigmatized, such a correlation would no longer exist.

Anyway, I think I've said enough here, and I'm quite interested to hear what others think about this issue. In particular, aside from comments about my reasoning, I am curious what alternatives others might offer for discovering the answers to empirical questions such as those raised by Jonathan's argument, assuming they share my worries about statistics.

PLEASE understand that I know little to nothing about statistical analysis, and it may very well be the case that I missed something, or (perhaps the more likely case) that this is an issue that has been discussed and dealt with many times and it just happens to be that anti-drug groups don't bother to worry too much about truth in advertising.

*I say "particular" because showing that someone has sex with sheep and is mean to their brother--or engages in any number of other harmful activities--probably wouldn't tell us much, as many people who are mean to their brothers don't have sex with sheep. I have in mind here specific types of harms, most likely serious crimes, that could be shown to have a particular connection with beastiality.

Psychiatric Association To Classify Libertarianism As Sociopathy

2006-01-17T17:56:00.000-05:00

January 17, 2006, Washington D.C. - Anonymous sources within the American Psychiatric Association claim that the upcoming fifth edition of the influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-V, will classify libertarianism as a form of sociopathy. A.P.A. spokesperson, Dr. M. Sori Tymesup, told reporters last night that it was A.P.A. policy not to comment upon internal publications prior to their release and suggested that those seeking a more immediate response should “go cry to their mommies.” In a press release issued this morning, the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington D.C., or as they refer to it, "Gov'mnt Sucks City," said they were deeply concerned about the A.P.A. reports and advised fellow libertarians to pray to the free market for strength.

In response to repeated requests for a response, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan responded that the administration was monitoring the situation, adding, "Look, we're never ones to lose sleep about giving people the shaft, but even we have our limits, the ice water in our veins has a freezing point - that's what makes us Compassionate Conservatives. These libertarians must spike their free-trade coffee with liquid nitrogen – they don’t care what the F.D.A. says.”

On the house floor this afternoon, Congressman Bernie Sanders (I-VT) praised the A.P.A. for "their courageous action" and introduced a bill to create seventeen cabinet-level positions to oversee a Federal Bureau of Asymmetrical Government Compassion for Wayward Libertarians Agency Department. "The F.B.A.G.C.W.L.A.D. will be instrumental in forming a commission to study the policy implications of recommending the creation of a congressional oversight sub-committee to monitor the F.B.A.G.C.W.L.A.D.’s Office of Agency Efficiency and Toilet Paper Roll Request Form Processing."

Unconfirmed reports report that across the country, libertarian-activists have been immolating themselves outside local Food Stamp offices. This afternoon, a caped crusader, referring to himself as Freedom Man, was seen outside Federal Election Commission headquarters paying passersby to sign petitions entitled "Freedom for Everyone: Property Uber Alles." Peter Jaworski could not be reached for comment.

Mark H. Herman

Episode 114

2006-01-09T19:51:00.000-05:00

Ethicist for Hire

2005-12-25T20:01:00.000-05:00

Didn't get what you wanted for Christmas?

Check out the "ethicist for hire" intimate apparrel.

http://www.cafepress.com/rsphilosopher/522181

Reframing utilitarianism

2005-12-17T14:18:00.000-05:00

Fellow thoughful bloggers:

A new thread for conversation. I would like to propose a reframing or extension of utilitarianism. Consider the following four-principle alternative; supporting comments follow.

1. Maximize suitably crafted preference satisfaction. When the inevitable conflicts occur…

2. Resolve the conflict by striking a fair balance of ‘satisfaction sacrifice’, or by …

3. Redefining the conflicting party’s preferences so that principle #1 applies again.

4. Kill all uncooperative adversaries.

I added Principle #4 to give urgency to the other principles, i.e., taking #2 and #3 seriously is the way to avoid #4. Unfortunately #4 lends descriptive power to these principles.

Principle #1 is plain vanilla utilitarianism. I won’t elaborate beyond clarifying that ‘suitably crafted’ means long-term interests. Below I discuss whether different kinds of interests should weigh more than others. (The Socrates and pig matter.)

Principle #2 is the first divergence from utilitarianism. I say tactical oughts involve maximizing utility, while moral oughts involve the prevention and resolution of conflict. Moral claims should be considered effective or ineffective, not true or false. Moral discussion is more about who must carry the burden of sacrifice rather than who gets how much satisfaction. By definition, when there is a conflict someone thinks the system of benefits and burdens that generates the largest aggregate of utility gives them an unfair share of sacrifice relative to the possible alternatives. A fair sacrifice of utility might mean an equal distribution of sacrifice for all participants, or it might mean minimizing the largest sacrifice, etc. But note the point: maximizing utility itself will not do as a solution. If it did, #1 would be satisfied and #2 would remain irrelevant.

Can morality as conflict prevention and resolution be justified? This is too large of a topic for me to address here, but I can make two quick comments. First, whatever else we want, we want our conflict to be the fuel of the expansion of opportunities, not their destruction, which they could become if #4 is reached because #2 and #3 failed. I can not imagine a consistent utilitarian arguing with this assumption.

Second, note that it is impossible for me to persuade you that persuasion has no force. This is a foundational loop that stops an infinite regress of claims and counter-claims in the same way that “I think, therefore I exist” stops a chain of doubt. Persuasion is an attempt to resolve a conflict on the level of conversation, and consensus is proof of persuasion’s success. Thus it is logically odd to argue that striving for a moral consensus, the resolution of conversational conflict, is irrelevant or has no moral force.

Principle #3 involves two ideas. The first is to get back to #1 because the satisfaction of utility is better than the sacrifice of utility. Second, it acknowledges the possibility of moral surprise, i.e., that our interests have simply been wrong, and that conflict resolution was necessary to realize this. Our higher interests now weigh more than our previous interests, making us better off in a way that principle #1 or #2 alone could not. (A satisfied Socrates is better than a dissatisfied Socrates.)

A Celebratory Haiku

2005-12-15T18:23:00.000-05:00

To the Greek Ancients:
A few hundred premises
more and you'd make sense.

Maybe.

The ABD Club

2005-12-14T16:04:00.000-05:00

I backtracked one of our hits to a link from this blog. Some of their stuff might be of interest to our readers. I have also added them to our list of "other observables."

Episode 113

2005-12-14T14:50:00.000-05:00

Intuition and justification

2005-12-14T12:38:00.000-05:00

Right on target, I'm working on a paper on reflective equilibrium, and one of my claims will be nobody really "does" RE. Our moral world is norm-centric, not theory-centric. When was the last time you used moral theory against the jerk who butt in line in front of you?

Instead, I claim that what we think of as reflective equilibrium is really just a mirroring of the academic social world: professors and students kicking around moral intuitions and theory's, and the discussion ends when some kind of understanding of all the concepts has sufficiently formed.

The issue of justificatory force for theory is thus irrelevant as it represents a category error.

(Sorry I don't know how to connect this to Arthur's post.)
Ed's Note: Added the link. I'll (PMJ) teach you how to do this, Adam.

Ethicist suicide

2005-12-13T21:34:00.000-05:00

Maybe I was the only one that missed this a few weeks ago, but I just saw it and wanted to share. No matter what your opinion of the Iraq war, this is a sad and disturbing story.

excerpt:
WASHINGTON — One hot, dusty day in June, Col. Ted Westhusing was found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad airport, a single gunshot wound to the head.

The Army would conclude that he committed suicide with his service pistol. At the time, he was the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq.

The Army closed its case. But the questions surrounding Westhusing's death continue.

Westhusing, 44, was no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor.

full story here

To kill or not to kill?

2005-12-13T12:34:00.000-05:00

As you all have probably seen in the news, the Crips gang founder Tookie Wilson was executed for murders he was convicted of in 1979. Let's assume for a second that the death penalty is a proper punishment for his crimes. Many people felt that he should not be executed because of how his life had changed (because he seemingly completely abandoned his gang life and ties) and he had become a Nobel Peace Prize nominee for his anti-gang work and children's books.

So the argument (aside from the death penalty being inherently wrong) for commuting his sentence was: he has done a lot of good (and thus redeemed himself) and he still has a lot of good to do in his anti-gang work.

The courts saw no reasons to overturn the penalty because he was found guilty of the crimes and sentenced to the penalty with no apparent flaws in the trial or case. There was basically no judicial reason to prevent the sentence.

The Governator refused a stay because he had doubts about his convictions, primarily on the fact that he never showed much remorse: he never admitted to the killings (and hence showed no remorse for those crimes), as well as said little about gang violence and remorse for what he had caused and other crimes he had committed (although he did regret his founding of the Crips).

So we are left with the question: assuming that the good he has done and will do is enough to consider sparing his life, is remorse a necessary component? The Governator (and others) seemed to think so.

Here's another argument for sparing his life: Tookie himself said, "There is no part of me that existed then that exists now." While there is some part of that man that committed the crimes still with him, it does seem possible that he has changed enough so that the person who committed those crimes is no longer in existence. A new person, who emerged from the old one through gradual change, was the one executed.

Again, assuming that the penalty of death imposed on Tookie Wilson in 1979 was appropriate, was killing this man today justified or right?

(My very brief take on this: I don't think remorse is a necessary component, and because he still has good to do and is significantly different from the man who committed the crimes, a man was perhaps unjustly punished and it is likely that his staying alive would have caused more good than bad, so I think I'd fall on the side of keeping him alive.)

CORRECTION: Tookie's last name was Williams, not Wilson. His full name was Stanley Tookie Williams.

Test those intuitions

2005-12-12T21:45:00.000-05:00

This is so relevant to our earlier discussion, it's scary.

With a hat tip to Pea Soup, the blog of the grown ups here at BG and some other grown ups elsewhere, I give you: The Moral Sense Test. It's from Harvard, and it tests your intuitions that, of course, none of us here rely on for our moral judgments.

Here's how they explain this thing:

The Moral Sense Test is a Web-based study into the nature of moral intuitions. How do humans, throughout the world, decide what is right and wrong? To answer this question, we have designed a series of moral dilemmas designed to probe the psychological mechanisms underlying our ethical judgments. By putting these questions on the Web, we hope to gain insight into the similarities and differences between the moral intuitions of people of different ages, from different cultures, with different educational backgrounds and religious beliefs, involved in different occupations and exposed to very different circumstances.

(Get out your calculator, Arthur, you'll need to compute a lot of utility!)

Moose and Dude

2005-12-12T17:45:00.000-05:00

As some of you may know, I used to write a webcomic. It was brilliant. Seriously, seriously brilliant. Don't believe me? Check it out. After some careful consideration and the suggestions of [read: death threats from] our own Mr. Jaworski, I have decided to bring the comic back. Episodes both old and new will continue to appear on my site (which is also linked from my name on the left). As I have decided to give the comic a slightly philosophical bent, new episodes may often appear here as well. And so, without further ado, Moose and Dude, Episode 112:

intuitions?

2005-12-12T10:18:00.000-05:00

I'll start us off with a meaty topic.

I am often baffled by the heavy reliance on intuitions in ethics. An unnamed professor in class (let's call him Shmoriarty) recently said "it's all we have!" Yet this concerns me. I understand that we all have intuitions that affect our opinions on ethical matters, but why should an intuition JUSTIFY an ethical conclusion?

I have seen philosophers scoff at ethical relativism, yet defend their intuitions as sensible justification for moral beliefs. It seems to me that intuitionism (and lesser degrees of the reliance on intuitions) boils down to relativism pretty quickly unless we think that everyone has the same intuitions. A brief look back at history (slavery, subjugation of women) informs us that intuitions about a lot of things have changed over time. Why should one's current intuitions have such a sturdy claim on our morals? Shouldn't we all be willing to say that I have intuition X, but in light of argument Y it appears intuition X could be false?

I don't think I am arguing that ethics can be done without a single reference to an intuition (though I suspect it might be possible). I'm wondering what the proper role for intuitions should be. Assuming full blown intuitionism is mistaken, most ethicists rely on intuitions far more than I am comfortable with.

What say the newly assembled BG bloggers?

(webmaster addition)Relevant Articles:
Moral Epistemology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)